They sat there exchanging remarks in cautious tones, and making the slender allotment of food go just as far as possible—as might a child nibbling all around the sugar coating on the top of his cake, “keeping the best for the last.”
“Goin’ to be some cold, in the bargain, seems like,” suggested Perk, whose mind always ran to picking out the thorny parts, and forgetting the pleasant ones lying in wait for them later on.
“Oh! well, we ought to know what cold stuff means, after being miles high so many hours at a time, and in an open cockpit at that, remember, Perk. What can’t be cured must be endured—there’s going to be a lot of good times when we’ve wound up this game for keeps, skip back to old San Diego, and that jolly little restaurant we know.”
“Yeah! providin’ we aint knocked aout o’ the runnin’ ’fore that time, ole hoss,” grumbled Perk.
CHAPTER XXII
The Man with the Cook’s Cap
Somehow Perk’s mind seemed to dwell most persistently on their lack of a comfortable fire. Many a time he must have been in much sore need of warmth than on the present occasion, and could “grin and bear it.” He wondered himself at his frequent grumbling, and at one time even openly confessed to Jack, as though his guilty conscience had begun to reprove him.
“Doant jest know what ails me, partner, to kick up sech a big row over standin’ things—must be I’m agettin’ right old, an’ near my second childhood. I’d sure give somethin’ to be able to warm my hands at a cracklin’ fire right naow; an’ seems like I wouldn’t get much o’ a snooze, when I’m a shiverin’ to beat the band, with nawthin’ warm inside me neither.”
“We’ll crawl a little further along to where we can get out of this chilly breeze. It’s because we’re so high up we feel it so. I’m meaning to take a look around tomorrow, and see if I can’t run across some sort of a hole, or crevice, where we’d be a lot more comfortable nights.”
“Huh! might as well make it a reg’lar cavern while yeou’re ’baout it, partner; not as I’m atall greedy, see; but I always did want to explore a gen-u-ine cave, ever sence I read Mark Twain’s ’Tom Sawyer’ an’ ’Huckleberry Finn’ books.”
“Just as you say, brother, it’ll have to be some kind of a cave then, so you’ll feel satisfied—anything to keep peace in the family. But for just one night we must put up with whatever comes along, and take it out in thinking how fine we’ll be another night, with a warm hole in the rocks, perhaps a nice blaze going, and all those good things to eat you mean to lug up here.”