She ran for fuel, and for water, and now we cooked and ate, the
fresh meat seeming excellent to me. Once more now we moved our camp, the
girl returning for the horse and our scanty belongings.
Always now we ate, haggling out the hump ribs, the tongue, the rich back
fat; so almost immediately we began to gain In strength. All the next
day we worked as we could at drying the meat, and taking the things we
needed from the carcass. We got loose one horn, drying one side of the
head in the fire. I saved carefully all the sinews of the back, knowing
we might need them. Then between us we scraped At the two halves of the
hide, drying it in the sun, fleshing it with our little Indian hoe, and
presently rubbing into it brains from the head of the carcass, as the
hide grew drier in the sun. We were not yet skilled in tanning as the
Indian women are, but we saw that now we would have a house and a bed
apiece, and food, food. We broiled the ribs at our fire, boiled the
broken leg bones in our little kettle. We made fillets of hide to shade
our eyes, she thus binding back the long braids of her hair. We rested
and were comforted. Each hour, it seemed to me, she rounded and became
more beautiful, supple, young, strong--there, in the beginning of the
world.
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