In a short time he had the potatoes cut into half-inch slices. Jack had peeled them and, following directions with many grins, had also cut a round hole an inch in size in the middle of each slice.
“He’s going to wear ’em around his neck, like beads,” Jimmie suggested, looking carefully over the heaped-up dish.
The bacon was now sliced thin, as were the onions, and in the center of each slice a round hole was made. Then Pat opened a couple of tins of beefsteak—so called by the packers—and cut a hole in the middle of each slice. Then he strung a slice of potato on the spit, then a slice of bacon, then a slice of onion, then a slice of beef, until there was nearly a yard of provisions.
“I begin to feel hungrier than ever!”
Jimmie was dancing around the fire as Pat turned the spit. There were only coals now, and Pat kept the toothsome collection turning slowly, so as to broil without scorching. The smell of the cooking bacon and onions set the boys to getting out the tin plates and making the coffee.
The sun, which had been shining fiercely all day, now seemed to be working his way through a mist. The atmosphere appeared to be tinted with the yellow haze one sees in the northern states in autumn.
As the boys were keeping watch for Ned and the aeroplane, they noticed the change in atmospheric conditions, but attributed it to the rising vapor brought out by the heat of the sun.
“Say,” Jimmie said, presently, “I smell smoke. I wonder if there’s goin’ to be another forest blaze here?”
“Of course you smell smoke,” Jack said, watching the broiling supper. “We’re cooking a steak à la brigand, ain’t we?”
“Smells like burnin’ leaves,” Jimmie insisted.