He heard her leave, and called after, without looking up: “Please remember. He said to cook some meat.”
She did not answer. Having satisfied her thirst at the spring, she took one of the bamboo rods, with its haggled blackening pieces of flesh, and returned to the fire. After some little experimenting, she contrived a way to support the rod beside the fire so that all the meat would roast without burning.
At first, keen as was her hunger, she turned with disgust from the flabby sun-seared flesh; but as it began to roast, the odor restored her appetite to full vigor. Her mouth fairly watered. It seemed as though Winthrope and Blake would never come. She heard their voices, and took the bamboo spit from the fire for the meat to cool. Still they failed to appear, and unable to wait longer, she began to eat. The cub meat proved far more tender than that of the old leopard. She had helped herself to the second piece before the two men appeared.
“Hold on, Miss Jenny; fair play!” sang out Blake. “You’ve set to without tooting the dinner-horn. I don’t blame you, though. That smells mighty good.”
Both men caught at the hot meat with eagerness, and Winthrope promptly forgot all else in the animal pleasure of satisfying his hunger. Blake, though no less hungry, only waited to fill his mouth before investigating the condition of the prospective tree ladder. The result of the attempt to burn the trunk did not seem encouraging to the others, and Miss Leslie looked away, that her face might not betray her, should he have an inkling of her neglect. She was relieved by the cheerfulness of his tone.
“Slow work, this fire business–eh? Guess, though, it’ll go faster this afternoon. The green wood is killed and is getting dried out. Anyway, we’ve got to keep at it till the tree goes over. This spring leopard won’t last long at the present rate of consumption, and we’ll need the eggs to keep us going till we get the hang of our bows.”
“What is that smoke back there?” interrupted Miss Leslie. “Can it be that the fire down the cleft has sprung up again?”
“No; it’s your fumigation. You had plenty of brush on hand, so I heaved it into the hole, and touched it off. While it’s burning out, you can put in time gathering grass and leaves for a bed.”
“Would you and Mr. Winthrope mind breaking off some bamboos for me?”
“What for?”