“You would wait to buy supplies in Rhyolite, remember,” she reminded her husband calmly. “I guess you’ll have to wait till you get there. I’ve got one piece of bread saved for junior. You and I go hungry—and cheer up, old dear, you’re used to it!”
“I’ve got grub,” Casey volunteered hospitably. “Didn’t stop to eat yet. I’ll pack the stuff back there to dry ground and boil some coffee and fry some bacon.” He looked at the woman and was rewarded by a smile so brilliant that Casey was dazzled.
“You certainly are a godsend,” she called after him, as he turned away to his own car. “It just happens that we’re out of everything. It’s so hard to keep anything on hand when you’re traveling in this country, with towns so far apart. You just run short, before you know it.”
Casey thought that the very scarcity of towns compelled one to avoid running short of food, but he did not say anything. He waded back to the island with a full load of provisions and cooking utensils, and in three minutes he was squinting against the smoke of a camp fire while he poured water from a canteen into his blackened coffeepot.
“Coffee! Jack, dear, can you believe your nose!” chirped the woman presently behind Casey. “Junior, darling, just smell the bacon! Isn’t he a nice gentleman? Go give him a kiss like a little man.”
Casey didn’t want any kiss—at least from junior. Junior was six years old and his face was dirty and his eyes were old, old eyes, hot brown like his father’s. He had the pinched, hungry look which Casey had seen only among starving Indians, and after he had kissed Casey perfunctorily he snatched the piece of raw bacon which Casey had just sliced off, and tore at it with his teeth like a hungry pup.
Casey affected not to notice, and busied himself with the fire while the woman reproved junior half-heartedly in an undertone and laughed and remarked upon the number of hours since they had breakfasted.
Casey tried not to watch them eat, but in spite of himself he thought of a prospector whom he had rescued last summer after a five-day fast. These people tried not to seem unusually hungry, but they ate more than the prospector had eaten, and their eyes followed greedily every mouthful which Casey took, as if they grudged him the food. Wherefore Casey did not take as many mouthfuls as he would have liked.
“This desert air certainly does put an edge on one’s appetite,” the woman smiled, while she blew across her fourth cup of coffee to cool it, and between breaths bit into a huge bacon sandwich which Casey could not help knowing was her third. “Jack, dear, isn’t this coffee delicious!”
“Mah-ma! Do we have to p-pay that there g-godsend? C-can you p-pay for more b-bacon for me, mah-ma?” Junior licked his fingers and twitched a fold of his mother’s soiled skirt.