"All yesterday they fire off guns—they have a fiesta. Then followed another torrent of guttural Spanish.
"A birthday party," explained La Mancha. "'Ware petticoats! It seems that they've got a woman up there—the Burrows girl, they call her; arrived since I was this way before."
"Perhaps," suggested the Tenderfoot stiffly, "Mr. Burrows has a niece or a daughter."
"Anyway, she's a good-looking piece, by all accounts. Wish I'd been up there for the birthday,—I like girls."
"Come, Mr. Tenderfoot." Arrapahoe Bill was cleaning his sheath knife by stabbing it into the earth. "Soldier, the kettle's a-boil. Sling in that coffee."
The soldier slung coffee and sugar into the camp kettle, let it boil a minute, then served the scalding stuff into four tin cups. Meanwhile Black Bear was busy filling four tin plates with a stew of reindeer. So the meal commenced, for three ravenous frontiersmen and one doubtful Britisher who had never before tasted venison, nor knew what manner of beast had furnished it.
"More girl deer," said the Black Bear in his dubious English.
"More what?" The Tenderfoot cast a glance of extreme suspicion at the stew.
"Dear girl, he means," explained the Blackguard,—"dear little Indian girl shot yesterday."
The Englishman, ghastly white, got up, clutching his breast with both hands, and walked away with great dignity into the woods.