The two smoked on for many minutes without indulging in conversation.  The camper quoted snatches from Service and Kipling, then he came back to Knibbs, who was evidently his favorite.  Billy listened and thought.

“Goin’ anywheres in particular?” he asked during a momentary lull in the recitation.

“Oh, south or west,” replied the other.  “Nowhere in particular—­any place suits me just so it isn’t north or east.”

“That’s me,” said Billy.

“Let’s travel double, then,” said the poetical one.  “My name’s Bridge.”

“And mine’s Billy.  Here, shake,” and Byrne extended his hand.

“Until one of us gets wearied of the other’s company,” said Bridge.

“You’re on,” replied Billy.  “Let’s turn in.”

“Good,” exclaimed Bridge.  “I wonder what’s keeping James.  He should have been here long since to turn down my bed and fix my bath.”

Billy grinned and rolled over on his side, his head uphill and his feet toward the fire.  A couple of feet away Bridge paralleled him, and in five minutes both were breathing deeply in healthy slumber.

CHAPTER III

“Five hundred dollars reward”

“’We kept a-rambling all the time.  I rustled grub, he rustled rhyme,’” quoted Billy Byrne, sitting up and stretching himself.

His companion roused and came to one elbow.  The sun was topping the scant wood behind them, glinting on the surface of the little creek.  A robin hopped about the sward quite close to them, and from the branch of a tree a hundred yards away came the sweet piping of a song bird.  Farther off were the distance-subdued noises of an awakening farm.  The lowing of cows, the crowing of a rooster, the yelping of a happy dog just released from a night of captivity.

Bridge yawned and stretched.  Billy rose to his feet and shook himself.

“This is the life,” said Bridge.  “Where you going?”

“To rustle grub,” replied Billy.  “That’s my part o’ the sketch.”

The other laughed.  “Go to it,” he said.  “I hate it.  That’s the part that has come nearest making me turn respectable than any other.  I hate to ask for a hand-out.”

Billy shrugged.  He’d done worse things than that in his life, and off he trudged, whistling.  He felt happier than he had for many a day.  He never had guessed that the country in the morning could be so beautiful.

Behind him his companion collected the material for a fire, washed himself in the creek, and set the tin can, filled with water, at the edge of the kindling, and waited.  There was nothing to cook, so it was useless to light the fire.  As he sat there, thinking, his mind reverted to the red mark upon Billy’s wrist, and he made a wry face.

Billy approached the farmhouse from which the sounds of awakening still emanated.  The farmer saw him coming, and ceasing his activities about the barnyard, leaned across a gate and eyed him, none too hospitably.