"It is too bad, señors, that this should not have been done while you were away, but we thought of nothing but your danger."
"You were perfectly right, Maria; if we were in peril, you did the best thing of all to obtain help for us. As to the dinner, there is no hurry whatever for it. What have you got to eat?"
"There is nothing, señor, but a few of the fish we fried two days ago, and the ham that we smoked of that bear."
"I will take the line, then, and go down and try to catch some fresh fish," Bertie said. "There is a good-sized pool about half-way between here and the ravine. I might get some fish there."
"I will take my gun, Bertie, and go up to the bushes by the ravine, and see if I can get a bird or two. There is no other shelter anywhere about here."
In half an hour the lad brought a dozen fish into the camp. None of them were above half a pound, but they were nearly of a size.
"These will be very nice," the woman said with a smile as he handed them to her. "I have thrown away the others. I do not think we dried them enough; they were certainly going bad. I have heard your brother fire several times, and as he does not often miss, I have no doubt he will bring us something."
Twenty minutes later Harry was seen coming along. When he arrived he threw down a large bunch of wild pigeons.
"There are ten brace," he said. "That will give us four apiece. I found nothing in the bushes, but I suddenly remembered that when we went across from the ravine to the house, lots of wild pigeons rose from the sides of the rocks. We did not give them a thought at the time, our attention being fixed upon the building. But when I got nothing above, I suddenly remembered them, and concluded that they had their nests in the crannies of the rocks. So I walked along to the top, and as I did so numbers of them flew up. I shot a couple; most of the others soon settled again, but some kept flying round and round, and in ten minutes I got as many as I wanted. Then of course I had to go down into the ravine by the rope and the steps to gather them up. I returned the way we did, by the rope we had left hanging from the top of the wall."
Maria was already at work on the birds. Taking them by the legs, she dipped them for a minute into a pot of boiling water, and as she took them out Bertie pulled off the feathers. Then she cut off the heads and feet, cleaned them, and spitted them on José's ramrod, and, raking out a line of embers from the fire, laid the ends of the ramrod on two forked twigs while she attended to the fish.