The young man turned toward the tree he had just quitted, and without further words assisted her to mount to the cavity.  It was an irregular-shaped vaulted chamber, pierced fifty feet above by a shaft or cylindrical opening in the decayed trunk, which was blackened by smoke as if it had served the purpose of a chimney.  In one corner lay a bearskin and blanket; at the side were two alcoves or indentations, one of which was evidently used as a table, and the other as a cupboard.  In another hollow, near the entrance, lay a few small sacks of flour, coffee, and sugar, the sticky contents of the latter still strewing the floor.  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.  “All right—­then if you’re not hiding, I’m going to.”  As he did not reply, she went on:  “If I can keep out of sight for a couple of weeks, this thing will blow over here, and I can get across into Yolo.  I could get a fair show there, where the boys know me.  Just now the trails are all watched, but no one would think of lookin’ here.”

“Then how did you come to think of it?” he asked carelessly.

“Because I knew that bear hadn’t gone far for that sugar; because I knew he hadn’t stole it from a cache—­it was too fresh, and we’d have seen the torn-up earth; because we had passed no camp; and because I knew there was no shanty here.  And, besides,” she added in a low voice, “may be I was huntin’ a hole myself to die in—­and spotted it by instinct.”