Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/210

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"First I see three. Down on bottom. They act scared. I go to drive them out. She very close. I shoot her. She run, all run, I run. Then I hear shooting. Baroney get one, you get one, Baroney get 'nother. Now lots of meat. Hoorah!"

"The meat! The meat!" cried Baroney, as if reminded of great hunger. Down he plumped, digging furiously with his knife and tearing with his fingers. He wrested out a strip of bloody flesh and began to chew it and suck it.

Stub, seeing red, likewise fell to. All of a sudden he could not wait longer.

"Here, doctor" And Baroney, his beard stained wolfish, passed him a piece.

But the doctor straightened up.

"That's enough. I must carry the news to the men. You two stay here and butcher what you can till horses come from the camp. It may be a matter of life or death for those other fellows. We ought to get this meat to them without delay."

And he was away, walking fast and running down through the valley, for the river beyond and the main party somewhere along it.

"He's one fine man," gasped Baroney, gazing after. "We think only of our stomach, he thinks of those others."

They worked hard, cutting and hacking and haul-