Harshaw had given orders that they were to spend the night at Eleven Mile camp. The place was a deserted log cabin built by a trapper. Supplies were kept there for the use of Slash Lazy D riders. Usually some of them were there at least two or three nights a week. Often punchers from other outfits put up at the shack. Range favors of this sort were taken as a matter of course. If the cabin was empty the visiting cowboy helped himself to food, fire, and shelter. It was expected of him that he would cut a fresh supply of fuel to take the place of that he had used.
It was getting on toward dusk when they reached Eleven Mile. Bob made a fire in the tin stove while Dud took care of the horses. He found flour and lard[2] hanging in pails from the rafters. Coffee was in a tin under the bunk.
Soon Dud joined him. They made their supper of venison, biscuits, and coffee. Hollister had just lit a pipe and stretched himself on the bed when the door opened and sixteen Ute bucks filed gravely in.
Colorow was the spokesman. “Hungry! Heap hungry!” he announced.
Hollister rolled out of the bunk promptly. “Here’s where we go into the barbecue business an’ the Slash ranch loses them elk,” he told Bob under cover of replenishing the fire in the stove. “An’ I can name two lads who’ll be lucky if they don’t lose their scalps. These birds have been drinkin’.”
It took no wiseacre to divine the condition of the Indians. Their whiskey breaths polluted the air of the cabin. Some of them swayed as they stood or clutched at one another for support. Fortunately they were for the moment in a cheerful rather than a murderous frame of mind. They chanted what was gibberish to the two whites while the latter made their preparations swiftly. Dud took charge of affairs. He noticed that his companion was white to the lips.
“I’ll knock together a batch of biscuits while you fry the steaks. Brace up, kid. Throw out yore chest. We better play we’re drunk too,” he said in a murmur that reached only Bob.
While Bob sliced the steaks from the elk hanging from pegs fastened in the mud mortar between the logs of the wall, Dud was busy whipping up a batch of biscuits. The Indians, packed tight as sardines in the room, crowded close to see how it was done. Hollister had two big frying-pans on the stove with lard heating in them. He slapped the dough in, spattering boiling grease right and left. One pockmarked brave gave an anguished howl of pain. A stream of sizzling lard had spurted into his face.
The other Utes roared with glee. The aboriginal sense of humor may not be highly developed, but it is easily aroused. The friends of the outraged brave stamped up and down the dirt floor in spasms of mirth. They clapped him on the back and jabbered ironic inquiries as to his well-being. For the moment, at least, Dud was as popular as a funny clown in a sawdust ring.
Colorow and his companions were fed. The stove roared. The frying-pans were kept full of meat and biscuits. The two white men discarded coats, vests, and almost their shirts. Sweat poured down their faces. They stood over the red-hot cook stove, hour after hour, while the Utes gorged. The steaks of the elk, the hind quarters, the fore quarters, all vanished into the sixteen distended stomachs. Still the Indians ate, voraciously, wolfishly, as though they could never get enough. It was not a meal but an endurance contest.