“Are you with the Wolverine Company?” demanded the man who had jostled him.

“I was for some years in charge of the woods.”

“I’ve et there.  You can stay to supper,” said Samuels ungraciously.

He turned sharp on his heel and marched back to the cabin, leaving Bob to follow with his horse.  The two younger men likewise went about their business.  Bob found himself quite alone, with only this ungracious permission to act on.

Nevertheless, quite imperturbably, Bob unsaddled, led his animal into the dark stable, threw it some of the wild hay stacked therein, washed himself in the nearby creek, and took his station on the deserted verandah.  The twilight fell.  Some of the children ventured into sight, but remained utterly unmoved by the young man’s tentative advances.  He heard people moving about inside, but no one came near him.  Finally, just at dusk, the youngest man protruded his head from the doorway.

“Come to supper,” said he surlily.

Bob ducked his head to enter a long, low room.  Its walls were of the rough logs; its floor of hewn timbers; its ceiling of round beams on which had been thrown untrimmed slabs as a floor to the loft above.  A board table stood in the centre of this, flanked by homemade chairs and stools of all varieties of construction.  A huge iron cooking stove occupied all of one end—­an extraordinary piece of ordnance.  The light from a single glass lamp cast its feeble illumination over coarse dishes steaming with food.

Bob bowed politely to the two women, who stood, their arms crossed on their stomachs, without deigning his salutation the slightest attention.  The children, of all sizes and ages, stared at him unblinking.  The two men shuffled to their seats, without looking up at the visitor.  Only the old man vouchsafed him the least notice....

“Set thar!” he growled, indicating a stool.

Bob found on the board that abundance and variety which always so much surprises the stranger to a Sierra mountaineer’s cabin.  Besides the usual bacon, beans, and bread, there were dishes of canned string-beans and corn, potatoes, boiled beef, tomatoes and pressed glass dishes of preserves.  Coffee, hot as fire, and strong as lye, came in thick china cups without handles.

The meal went forward in absolute silence, which Bob knew better than to interrupt.  It ended for each as he or she finished eating.  The two women were left at the last quite alone.  Bob followed his host to the veranda.  There he silently offered the old man a cigar; the younger men had vanished.

Samuels took the cigar with a grunt of thanks, smelled it carefully, bit an inch off the end, and lit it with a slow-burning sulphur match.  Bob also lit up.

For one hour and a half—­two cigars apiece—­the two sat side by side without uttering a syllable.  The velvet dark drew close.  The heavens sparkled as though frosted with light.  Bob, sitting tight on what he knew was the one and only plan to accomplish his purpose, began to despair of his chance.  Of his companion he could make out dimly only the white of his hair and beard, the glowing fire of his cigar.  Inside the house the noises made by the inhabitants thereof increased and died away; evidently the household was seeking its slumber.  A tree-toad chirped, loudest in all the world of stillness.