From this storehouse the young man drew a wicker flask of whiskey, and handed it, with a tin cup of water, to the woman.

She waved the cup aside, placed the flask to her lips, and drank the undiluted spirit.

Yet even this was evidently bravado, for the water started to her eyes, and she could not restrain the paroxysm of coughing that followed.
"I reckon that's the kind that kills at forty rods," she said, with a hysterical laugh.

"But I say, pardner, you look as if you were fixed here to stay," and she stared ostentatiously around the chamber.

But she had already taken in its minutest details, even to observing that the hanging strips of bark could be disposed so as to completely hide the entrance.
"Well, yes," he replied; "it wouldn't be very easy to pull up the stakes and move the shanty further on." Seeing that either from indifference or caution he had not accepted her meaning, she looked at him fixedly, and said,-- "What is your little game ?" "Eh ?" "What are you hiding for--here, in this tree ?" "But I'm not hiding." "Then why didn't you come out when they hailed you last night ?" "Because I didn't care to." Teresa whistled incredulously.