The three went on with their cooking, "storing up like Noah against the flood," Paul said, knowing that Silent Tom would keep a watch beyond which no warrior could pass.
"Our beautiful stone house will need a good airing after all this is over," said Paul. "Smoke will gather and ashes too are flying about. But it's a grand cooking."
"So it is," said Long Jim, who was in his element. "That wuz shorely a fine fat deer. You kin pile more on that shelf in the rock, thar, Paul. Wrap the dry leaves 'roun' 'em, too. They're clean an' good. I guess that old-timer uv yourn that you've told us about often—'Lysses, wuzn't it?"
"Yes, Ulysses."
"That's right. Well, old 'Lysses in them roamings uv his, lastin' a thousand years or some sech time, would hev been glad to come upon a place like this to rest his wanderin' an' sleepy head. I've a notion uv my own too, Paul."
"What is it?"
"That Greece ain't the land it's cracked up to be. I've never heard you tell uv any rivers thar like the Ohio or Missip. I ain't heard you say anythin' about the grand forests like ourn, an' all the hundreds an' thousands uv branches an' creeks an' springs."
"No, Jim, it's a dry country, mostly bare."
"Then the wilderness here fur me. I like a big woods, a thousand miles every way, an' the leaves so thick you kin hardly see the sky above in spring. I don't see what the herds of buff'ler found thar to live on."
"They didn't have our kind of buffalo."