“If yer call an empty belly a hurt,” rejoins another, “I’ve got it already. I kud jest eat a raw jackass ’ithout skinnin’ him.”
“Come, fellers!” cries a third, “let’s gramble for a meal o’ these peenyuns.”
Following this suggestion, we commence searching for the nuts of the pine. We find to our dismay that there is but a limited supply of this precious food; not enough either on the trees or the ground to sustain us for two days.
“By gosh!” exclaims one, “we’ll have to draw for our critters.”
“Well, and if we have to—time enough yet a bit, I guess. We’ll bite our claws a while first.”
The water is distributed in a small cup. There is still a little left in the xuages; but our poor horses suffer.
“Let us look to them,” says Seguin; and, drawing his knife, he commences skinning one of the cacti. We follow his example.
We carefully pare off the volutes and spikelets. A cool, gummy liquid exudes from the opened vessels. We break the short stems, and lifting the green, globe-like masses, carry them to the thicket, and place them before our animals. These seize the succulent plants greedily, crunch them between their teeth, and swallow both sap and fibres. It is food and drink to them. Thank Heaven! we may yet save them!
This act is repeated several times, until they have had enough.
We keep two videttes constantly on the look-out—one upon the hill, the other commanding the mouth of the defile. The rest of us go through the ravine, along the sides of the ridge, in search of the cones of the pinon.