Holding one end with his teeth and the other with his hand, each man would sever the bite about two inches from his mouth with one of his silver-handled belt knives.
"You see how superfluous are knives, forks and plates," said the Colonel in an undertone to Francisco as they watched this primitive process.
"And now for our own breakfast. I am as hollow as is the wild pumpkin at the end of summer," and he gave a sharp blow to his horse, another to Barboza, and they were off towards their own waiting meal in the shadow of the willows.
Manuel had killed a small kid soon after reaching the corral, and had roasted it on a spit in its skin over a fire of dry thistles and charcoal. He was basting it with salt water, which he had brought in a bottle. In the coals below were sweet potatoes roasting in their jackets. So tempting were the combined odours of lamb and sweet potatoes that Francisco ran to the little stream to wash himself, in order that he might begin to appease his appetite at once.
"I never was so hungry," said he, as he took the tin plate offered him by Manuel. "I think I could eat with my hands like the cowboys! Do they ever eat anything but meat?"
"Seldom. They care but little for vegetables; not enough to take the trouble of raising a few. Meat and galletas, the hard biscuit of the Pampas, often three or four months old, is all they have besides their máte, that they must have always.
"Que esperanza! lad, this lamb is good! It takes me back to other days. Many times on our expeditions into the provinces have I eaten thus."
"Tell me, do tell me of one while we eat and rest," coaxed Francisco.
"There were many, lad," said the Colonel, as he passed his plate back to Manuel for another piece of the smoking, savoury lamb. "I've never told you of the expedition of General Roca into Patagonia. I was commanding a regiment at that time, one of the regiments that became famous because of that remarkable undertaking.
"Patagonia is all of the southern-most part of this continent lying between the Rio[20] Negro and the Straits of Magellan, excepting the narrow strip between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, which belongs to Chile. This country is not the barren, unproductive country now that it was before our expedition carried civilization to its wild wastes and reclaimed those vast prairies from the Indians."