The animals, being unladen, were fitted with a species of leather bracelet about their forefeet and allowed to stray at their will. A fire was built and coarse food made ready. It is hardly a thing to speak of, but their manner of preparing tea was utterly depraved, the leaves being flung into a tin of boiling water and allowed to _stew_. The result was something that I imagine etchers might use in making lines upon their metal plates. But for my day's fast I should have been unequal to this, or to the crude output of their frying-pans.
Yet I was indeed glad that no sign of my dismay had escaped me, for the cow-persons, Hank and Buck, as I discovered, had given unusual care to the repast on my account, and I should not have liked to seem unappreciative. Quite by accident I overheard the honest fellows quarrelling about an oversight: they had, it seemed, left the finger-bowls behind; each was bitterly blaming the other for this, seeming to feel that the meal could not go forward. I had not to be told that they would not ordinarily carry finger-bowls for their own use, and that the forgotten utensils must have been meant solely for my comfort. Accordingly, when the quarrel was at its highest I broke in upon it, protesting that the oversight was of no consequence, and that I was quite prepared to roughen it with them in the best of good fellowship. They were unable to conceal their chagrin at my having overheard them, and slunk off abashed to the cooking-fire. It was plain that under their repellent exteriors they concealed veins of the finest chivalry, and I took pains during the remainder of the evening to put them at their ease, asking them many questions about their wild life.
Of the dangers of the jungle by which we were surrounded the most formidable, it seemed, was not the grizzly bear, of which I had read, but an animal quaintly called the "high-behind," which lurks about camping-places such as ours and is often known to attack man in its search for tinned milk of which it is inordinately fond. The spoor of one of these beasts had been detected near our campfire by the cow-person called Buck, and he now told us of it, though having at first resolved to be silent rather than alarm us.