“Cards and dice!” this very proudly.

“You poor nut!” Frank’s voice was a mixture of contempt and compassion.  Nucky immediately turned sulky and the meal was finished in silence.  When the last doughnut had been devoured, Frank stretched himself in the warm sand left among the rocks by the river at flood.

“Must be eighty degrees down here,” he yawned.  “We’ll rest for a half hour, then we’ll make the night camp.  It’s after two now and it will be dark in this narrow rift by four.”

Nucky looked about him apprehensively.  The Canyon here was little more than a gorge whose walls rose sheer and menacing toward the narrow patch of blue sky above.  He could not make up his mind to lie down and relax as Frank had done.  All was too new and strange.

“Are there snakes round here?” he demanded.

Frank’s grunt might have been either yes or no.  Nucky glanced impatiently at the guide’s closed eyes, then he began to clamber aimlessly and languidly over the rocks to the river edge.  At a distance of perhaps a hundred feet from Frank he stopped, looked at the bleak, blank wall of the river opposite, bit his nails and shuddering turned back.  He crouched on a rock, near the guide, smoking one cigarette after another until Frank jumped to his feet.

“Three o’clock, New York!  Time to get ready for the night.”

“I don’t want to stay in this hole all night!” protested Nucky, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“You’ll like it.  You’ve no idea how comfortable I’m going to make you.  Now, your job is to gather drift wood and pile it on that flat topped rock yonder.  Keep piling till I tell you to quit.  The nights are cold and I’ll keep a little blaze going late, for you.”

“What’s the idea?” demanded Nucky.  “Why stay down here, like lost dogs, when there’s a first class hotel back up there?”

Frank sighed.  “Well, the idea is this!  A real he man likes camping in the wilds better’n he likes anything on earth.  Seaton thought maybe somewhere in that pindling carcass of yours there was the making of a he man and that you’d like the experience.  I promised him I’d try you out and I’m trying you, hang you for an ungrateful, cowardly cub.”

Nucky turned on his heel and began to pick up drift wood.  He was in poor physical trim but the pile, though it grew slowly, grew steadily.  By the time Frank announced the camp ready, Nucky’s fuel pile was of really imposing dimensions.  And dusk was thickening in the gorge.

Before a great flat faced rock that looked toward the river, was a stretch of clean dry sand.  Against this rock, the guide had placed a rubber air-mattress and a plentiful supply of blankets.  A small folding table stood before a rough stone fire place.  A canvas shelter stretched vertically on two strips of driftwood, shut off the night wind that was beginning to sweep through the Canyon.  The mules were tethered close to the camp.