“Is you stuffed full?” asked Bunco.
“Pretty nigh,” replied Larry, glancing at his friend with an inquiring look; “seems to me that you have overdone it.”
“Me is pretty tight,” said Bunco languidly.
“Come, come,” cried the trapper, “don’t shirk your victuals. There’s one more course, and then you can rest if you have a mind to.”
So saying, the indefatigable man took up the intestines of the buffalo, which had been properly prepared for the purpose, turned them inside out, and proceeded to stuff them with strips of tender loin well salted and peppered. The long sausage thus hastily made was hung in festoons before the fire, and roasted until it was thoroughly browned. Portions were then cut off and set down before the company. When each thought of beginning he felt as though the swallowing of a single bite were utterly impossible, but when each had actually begun he could not stop, but continued eating until all was finished, and then wished for more, while Benjamin Hicks chuckled heartily to witness the success of his cookery and the extent of his friends’ powers.
Ah, it is all very well, reader, for you to say “Humph! nonsense,” but go you and wander for a year or two among the Rocky Mountains, acquire the muscles of a trapper and the digestion of an ostrich, then starve yourself for a few days, and get the chance of a “feed” such as we have feebly described, and see whether you won’t come home (if you ever come home) saying, “Well, after all, truth is strange, stranger than fiction!”
It need scarcely be said that the solace of the pipe was sought immediately after the meal was concluded by Will, Larry, and Bunco; but Big Ben did not join them. He had starved longer than they, and intended, as he said, to eat all night!
“Well,” observed Larry, as he extended himself at full length before the blaze, and resting his right elbow on the ground and his head on his hand, smoked in calm felicity; “I’ve often found that there’s nothin’ like tiredness to make a man enjoy rest, but, faix, it’s this night I’ve larned, as I niver did before, that there’s nothin’ like starvation to mak wan enjoy his victuals.”
“Eight, Larry,” said Will Osten with a laugh; “upon my word I think it would be worth while to live always on the plan of missing our meals each alternate day, in order to enjoy them more thoroughly on the other days.”
“If city men would go on that plan,” observed the trapper, gravely tearing the flesh from a rib with his teeth, and speaking at the same time, “there would be no use for doctors.”