She had no fire to kindle. That would be lighted in the open air by other female members of the family.
There were no pots and saucepans to be washed, although the one round, shallow, sheet-iron "fryer," such as soldiers sometimes use in camp, which she dragged from under a buffalo-skin in the corner, would have been none the worse for a little scrubbing.
She brought it out, and then she dropped it and sat down to take another look at that wonderful "talking leaf."
"What made me kneel down and shut my eyes? I could remember then. It is all gone now. It went away as soon as I got up again."
She folded the leaf carefully, and hid it in the folds of her deer-skin dress, but she was evidently a good deal puzzled.
"Maria Santisima—yes, I do remember that. It will all come back to me by-and-by. No! I don't want it to. It makes me afraid. I will cook supper, and forget all about it."
A Mexican woman of the lower class, unable to read, ignorant of almost everything but a little plain cookery, has less to forget than have most American children of six years old. But why should it frighten her, if the little she knew and had lost began to come back to her mind?
She did not stop to answer any such questions as that, but poured some pounded corn, a coarse uneven meal, into a battered tin pan. To this was added a little salt, some water was stirred in until a thick paste was made, and then the best cook of the Apaches was ready to carry her batter to the fire. Envious black eyes watched her while she heated her saucepan on the coals she raked out. Then she melted a carefully measured piece of buffalo tallow, and began to fry for her husband and master the cakes no other of his squaws could so well prepare.
When the cakes were done brown, the same fryer and a little water would serve to take the toughness out of some strips of dried venison before she broiled them, and the great chief would be the best-fed man in camp, until the hunters should return from the valley below with fresh game.
They were quite likely to do that before night, but Many Bears was a man who never waited long for something to eat after a hard day's march.