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The smell of it, like the smell of balsaan to clean out as left of the water in the bottom of the scow, and as he worked he whistled He wanted Marette to hear that whistle He wanted her to know that day had brought with it no doubt for hilorious world was about them and ahead of them And they were safe
As he worked, his mind became more than ever set upon the resolution to take no chances He paused in his whistling for a ht of the years of experience which were his surest safeguard now He had become almost uncannily expert in all the finesse and trickery of his craft of hunting huame, and he knehat the man-hunters would do and what they would not do He had them checkmated at the start And, besides--with Kedsty, O'Connor, and hi was short-handed just at present There was an enormous satisfaction in that But even with a score of men behind him Kent knew that he would beat them His hazard, if there was peril at all, lay in this first day Only the Police gasoline launch could possibly overtake them And with the start they had, he was sure they would pass the Death Chute, conceal the scow, and take to the untracked forests north and west before the launch could menace them After that he would keep alest and north, deeper and deeper into that wild and untraveled country which would be the last place in which the Laould seek for theain, drifting like gray-white lace between him and the blue of the sky, and in that hest cedars, and day broke gloriously over the earth
For a quarter of an hour longer Kent mopped at the floor of the scow, and then--with a suddenness that drew hiht another aroma in the clean, forest-scented air It was bacon and coffee! He had believed that Marette was taking her ti toilet Instead of that, she was getting breakfast It was not an extraordinary thing to do To fry bacon and make coffee was not, in any sense, a remarkable achieve touch to Kent's paradise She was getting HIS breakfast! And--coffee and bacon--To Kent those two things had always stood for home They were intimate and companionable Where there were coffee and bacon, he had known children who laughed, wo faces They were home-builders