“Well, it is a problem at times,” Tinny admitted. “There aren’t any farms here where you can get fresh vegetables, though Hang Gow has a sort of garden.”
“Who’s Hang Gow?” asked Ned.
“My Chinese cook, and a good one he is,” Tinny answered. “What he can’t do with canned goods isn’t worth doing.”
“Oh, then you get canned stuff?” asked Bob, with a sigh of relief.
“Sure we do! And plenty of it. The supplies come in regularly to Livingston and we get our share. The Yellowstone Park tourists have to eat, you know. Uncle Sam sees to that.”
Professor Snodgrass was so busily engaged in making notes about the rare toad he had captured that he took little part in the talk among the boys and Mallison. Nor was Bill Cromley much given to conversation. The miner seemed to be satisfied to sit still and look about on scenes with which he had been familiar for many years. Every now and then he would breathe in deeply, as if he could not fill his lungs full enough of the pure mountain air.
“How much farther to your place, Tinny?” asked Ned, when they had covered about a score of miles along the trail.
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes more,” the owner of the Thunder Mountain mine answered, as he looked at the clock on the dash of his automobile. “I told Hang Gow to have things ready for us.”
“That’s good!” exclaimed Bob, and he visibly brightened. “You mean something to eat, don’t you?” he inquired, so as not to labor under a misapprehension.
“That’s what I mean, Chunky!” laughed Mallison, and the other two lads joined in the merriment.