Again was Tim disappointed. He had hoped Bobby would propose boiling her, in which case all he would be obliged to do would be to pop her in the kettle, letting her stay there until she was done. But since Bobby was so cruel as to propose the hardest way of cooking the hen, roasted it must be, or gone was his reputation as cook.
"I'll pick the feathers off," said Bill, gleefully; and Tim handed him the fowl.
"I don't seem to see how we're goin' to get along," said Tim to Bobby. "We ain't got any dishes to cook her in."
"We don't want any, do we?" asked his assistant, in some surprise. "I always thought when folks that were campin' out cooked anything, they stuck it on a stick in front of the fire an' let it sizzle."
"We can do it so now," he exclaimed; and since this suggestion had been made, roasting chickens did not appear to be any very hard matter after all.
He piled the wood on until he had a fire large enough to roast a pig, cut a long sharp stick on which to spit the hen, and had hardly completed these preparations when Bill Thompson re-appeared with the now featherless victim of Tip's blood-thirsty nature.
Bill's work might have been done more neatly; but what did a few feathers amount to when a dozen hungry boys were waiting to be fed? Tim was not quite sure whether he had better cut off the head and legs or not; but as they did not seem to be in the way, he concluded they might as well be cooked. Neither did he think any cleaning necessary, but plunged the stick through her, and stuck one end in the ground in front of the fire with all the grace of an experienced cook.
The remainder of the party watched this work with hungry eagerness; and when Tim filled the kettle with potatoes, they settled themselves down contentedly to wait for the "bang-up" dinner, which they in a measure owed to Tip.
The water in the pot bubbled and boiled merrily; the murdered hen began to steam and sizzle, until every boy's mouth watered; while Tim and Bobby bustled around in an important manner, feeling that they were looked up to as the head men of the party, and enjoying the honor immensely.
They piled on the wood, stirred the potatoes, as if that was the important part of cooking that vegetable, while every few moments Tim would smell of the hen, nearly singeing the hair from his head each time. They were certainly good cooks, if keeping up a big fire could make them so.