noon
You ca n't blame them for admiring . You do look good to other men besides me , you know . '' So they rode through the camp with but a nod to the aproned cook , who thrust out his head , and a gray-haired man with glasses , who humped over a drafting board under an awning . Their noon fire they built at a spring five miles beyond . Thereafter they skirted three lakes in succession , Fraser , Burns , and Decker , and climbed over a low divide to drop into the Bulkley Valley -- a pleasant , rolling country , where the timber was interspersed with patches of open grassland and set with small lakes , wherein schools of big trout lived their finny lives unharried by anglers -- save when some wandering Indian snared one with a primitive net . Far down this valley they came upon the first sign of settlement . Hardy souls , far in advance of the coming railroad , had built here and there a log cabin and were hard at it clearing and plowing and getting the land ready for crops .