Bud cocked an ear toward him inquiringly, made
nothing of the jumble and rode off to the cabin, leading
Sunfish after him. The fellow might or might not be the idiot
he looked, and he might or might not keep his hands off the
pack. Bud was not going to take any chance.
He heard sounds within the cabin, but no one appeared until
he shouted, "Hello!" twice. The door opened then and Bart
Nelson put out his head, his jaws working over a mouthful of
food that seemed tough.
"Oh, it's you. C'm awn in an' eat," he invited, and Bud
dismounted, never guessing that his slightest motion had been
carefully observed from the time he had forded the creek at
the foot of the slope beyond the cabin.
Bart introduced him to the men by the simple method of waving
his hand at the group around the table and saying, "Guess you
know the boys. What'd yuh say we could call yuh?"
"Bud--ah--Birnie," Bud answered, swiftly weighing the
romantic idea of using some makeshift name until he had made
his fortune, and deciding against it. A false name might mean
future embarrassment, and he was so far from home that his
father would never hear of him anyway. But his hesitation
served to convince every man there that Birnie was not his
name, and that he probably had good cause for concealing his
own.
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