"Nonsense, Don Miguel, how can you say when I have seen you engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with tigers?"
"That is possible, my friend; I would do so again, if necessary--but a jaguar is not a grizzly."
"Come, come, I will not tease you any longer. While Curumilla prepares our breakfast, I will go down into the ravine. Help my friend to roast a piece of my game, and I am sure when you have tasted it, the exquisite flavour will make you quite alter your opinion about friend Grizzly."
And carelessly throwing his rifle on his shoulder, which he had reloaded, Valentine then entered the chaparral, in which he almost immediately disappeared.
The game, as Valentine called the grizzly, weighed about four hundred weight. After flaying it with that dexterity the Indians possess, Curumilla, aided by the two Mexicans, hung up the body to a branch, that bent beneath its weight; he cut steaks from the loin, and took out the pluck, which regular hunters consider the most delicate part of the beast; and then, while Don Miguel and Don Pablo lit the fire, and laid the steaks on the ashes, the Indian entered the cave.
Don Pablo and his father, long accustomed to the Araucano chief's way of behaving, made no remark, but went on with the preparations for breakfast actively, the more so because the night's fatigues and their long privations had given them an appetite which the smell of the cooking meat only heightened.
Still, the meal had been ready some time, and Valentine had not returned. The two gentlemen were beginning to feel anxious. Nor did Curumilla emerge either from the cavern in which he had now been upwards of an hour. The Mexicans exchanged a glance.
"Can anything have happened?" Don Miguel asked.
They rose; Don Pablo proceeded toward the cave, while his father went to the end of the platform. At this moment Valentine arrived on one side, Curumilla on the other, holding two young bearskins in his hands.
"What does that mean?" Don Pablo in his surprise could not refrain from asking.
The Indian smiled. "It was a she-bear," he said.
"Are we going to breakfast?" Valentine asked.
"Whenever you like, my friend," Don Miguel answered; "we were only waiting for you."
"It was not my fault. Just fancy, down there it is as dark as in an oven. I had great difficulty in finding our friend's body; but, thanks to heaven, it is now in the ground, and protected from the teeth of the coyotes and the other vermin of the prairie."