It did not take very long to butcher and cut up the sheep, but several trips had to be made before the meat and hide and head had been carried to the camp.
"Now," said Hugh, "I want you to make the fire and cook breakfast, and I'm going to dry some of this meat."
While Jack was at work getting breakfast, Hugh stretched two of the sling ropes double, between a tree and some tall bushes that grew near it, and then went to work at the carcass of the sheep, cutting the flesh from it in wide flakes, of which before long he had a considerable pile. These he hung over the sling ropes, much as a laundress would hang handkerchiefs on a clothes line, and before Jack had announced that breakfast was ready, one of the lines was covered with red meat, which was already beginning to turn brown, in the rays of the hot sun.
"Whew!" said Hugh, as he came up to the fire to eat his breakfast, "this is going to be a scorching hot day. I believe we'll stop here for a while, and give that meat a chance to dry, and the horses a chance to rest up, and feed good; they're beginning to get poor, and I don't wonder, for they haven't had much chance to eat for the last six days. Is that all the breakfast you've got?" he continued, looking at the frying-pan full of meat which Jack had cooked; "why, that ain't a marker; I could eat all that myself. You'll have to put on some more before long, if you've got anything like the appetite I've got."
Breakfast was a deliberate meal, and greatly enjoyed. Jack thought that the flesh of the mountain sheep was the best meat that he had ever eaten, and said so.
"It's good," said Hugh. "It's sure good; but don't make up your mind it's the best meat in the world till we get among the buffalo; then you'll be eating what the Pawnees call, real meat, and if you don't say that fat cow is the best meat in the world, I don't want a cent. Did you notice anything when we came down into the valley last night?"
"Yes, I saw where some cattle had been."
"Ah, that's what I meant; but them cattle ain't the white-horned spotted cattle that you're used to see; they're the cattle that belong here on these prairies."
"What, are those buffalo tracks?"
"That's what. They're old, but there's been buffalo here this spring, and I miss my guess if we don't see some of 'em before many days have passed."