“I don’t know whether the grizzly will make good eating?” Clay said, “but we can soon find out If you’ll get Captain Joe and Teddy out of the way, I’ll fry a few slices.”
“I bar that!” Alex exclaimed. “I don’t like fried bear meat. Say, what’s the matter of parboiling the meat and making a bear stew? That will be all right. We’ve got potatoes, onions, turnips, rice, and lots of things to put into it.”
“I wish we had a cabbage!” Case observed. “There never was a good stew that wasn’t part cabbage. Don’t they can cabbage?”
“Never heard of canned cabbage, but when we come to the salmon canneries down the river we can find out about it. You go and get the fish for breakfast, and we’ll have the bear stew for dinner. Just take the canoe and paddle ashore and fish in some quiet pool.”
Case clapped his hands to his sides in quick remembrance.
“The canoe?” he repeated. “Who’s seen the old trough since the run we made through the rapids? Of course it was all banged to bits. Now, what are we going to do?”
“Make another,” Clay responded. “We can make another in a day, or we can wait until we get to Boat Encampment and buy one.”
“Then we’ll buy one,” Alex put in. “It is too much of a job to burn one out. We can buy one for a few cents, of an Indian.”
“And another thing,” Case observed, “where is that bearskin rug you were going to have?”
“Back there in the woods,” was the slow reply.