“Why, they had sniffed water somewhere. Pretty soon they came to a stream. Kit said he never had anything in his life taste as good as that water. It didn’t seem as if they could get enough. The men rested up a while and then started on again across the desert. On the fourth day they came to Colorado. There they stopped to rest and to cook an old horse which they had bought off the Indians.”
“Pretty fine feast,” laughed Rat. “Cold water and horse meat! Which did they take first—the water or the horse meat?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
“Why, I know a man back East who lives on dried apples. He has dried apples for breakfast, cold water for dinner, and swells up for supper. Perhaps the horse meat served in the same way.”
“By and by they came to a mission down in the San Gabriel Valley. The priests had taught the Indians there how to make farms. There was everything one wanted to eat.”
“What did they do? Help themselves?”
“No, they didn’t. They paid for what they took.”
“That’s a good un,” laughed Rat.
“They did, for Kit Carson told me so. He said he paid four butcher’s knives for a steer.”
“He might just as well bought the steer without handing over the butcher’s knives.”