Larry grinned. “‘A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind,’ doesn’t it?” he quoted. “Nothing like an empty tummy to make you sympathize with other things that can’t get enough to eat. How about it, Purdy? Where do we land for supper?”
“Tomatoes and peaches. I’ll cook the tomatoes, if you’d rather have ’em hot.”
“Oh, my suffering ancestors!” Dick groaned. “I’ll never be able to look a peach-tree or a tomato-vine in the face after this! I’m as hollow as the biggest bass drum that was ever built, and you tell me you’ll pass me a plate of sloppy peaches with tomatoes on the side! Let’s have a barbecue and roast old Fishbait.”
They joked one another about it over the camp-fire, as good sportsmen should, but the hard work and slender fare were really beginning to take hold. And the worst of it was, the battle wasn’t won yet; a fact upon which Larry enlarged to Dick after the camp-fire had been back-logged for the night, and Purdick, once more wearied to the point of collapse, was asleep in his blankets.
“I didn’t want to load Purdy up any heavier than he is loaded already,” was the way Larry began on the disturbing fact, “but I have a horrible suspicion that we are a good way from Natrolia and a fresh supply of eats yet. I’ve been kind of keeping tab on our side-steppings all day, and we’ve made a pretty stiff lot of southing. Don’t you think so?”
“I know it,” Dick replied gloomily.
“You’re still up to it, aren’t you?” Larry asked.
“Up to another day of it, I guess, though I’ll have to confess that I don’t feel much thicker than a sheet of paper through the middle.”
“My fix, too,” said Larry. “But that’s all right; we’re tough and we can stand it. Purdy’s the lad I’m worrying about. Did you notice that he was eating almost nothing at supper?”
Dick nodded. “You’d say a fellow couldn’t possibly starve past the getting-hungry point on two days of short rations; but Purdy isn’t normal yet—not outdoor normal. We’ll have to watch him to-morrow, and if we see he’s breaking, we’ll just dump one of the burro loads and make him ride.”