"Grub's ready!"
The Boy came up and dropped on his heels in the usual attitude. The Colonel tore a piece off the half-charred, half-raw pancake.
"Maybe you'll think the fire isn't thoroughly distributed, but that's got to do for bread," he remarked severely, as if in reply to some objection.
The Boy saw that something he had said or looked had been misinterpreted.
"Hey? Too much fire outside, and not enough in? Well, sir, I'll trust my stomach to strike a balance. Guess the heat'll get distributed all right once I've swallowed it."
When the Colonel, mollified, said something about cinders in the rice, the Boy, with his mouth full of grit, answered: "I'm pretendin' it's sugar."
Not since the episode of the abandoned rifle had he shown himself so genial.
"Never in all my bohn life," says the Colonel after eating steadily for some time—"never in a year, sah, have I thought as much about food as I do in a day on this——trail."
"Same here."
"And it's quantity, not quality."