“Well,” Harry answered. “You can get supper any old time you want to. I’d be glad to serve as chef tonight if it wasn’t for this bum old arm. I could do a pretty good job cooking with one hand, only I’m just a little bit weak yet.”
Gilroy at once accepted the invitation and began preparations for supper, going about the work awkwardly.
“What are you going to have for supper?” he asked after a survey of the provision shelves.
“Bear stew!” laughed Harry, well knowing the fat clerk’s abhorrence of bear flesh. “We’re all going to eat bear stew. But you can have a broiled rattlesnake if you care to go and catch one.”
“Do you eat rattlesnakes, really?” he asked.
Ned and Harry joined in a laugh at sight of the clerk’s disturbed countenance. After a time Ned arose to assist in the preparation of the meal, and then, for the first time, the others took note of the absence of his coat and hat.
“Where are they?” Harry asked, pointing from breast to head.
Then Ned explained his plight and Gilroy shuddered in sympathy.
“On a narrow ledge,” he wailed, “hundreds of feet up in the air, a battle with two great birds like that! I’ve heard a great deal about the Pacific coast,” he went on, “and have long desired a trip like the present one, but I’ll tell you now that my infatuation for the west has vanished. Now I begin to understand,” he continued, “why we rarely see a very old man west of Denver.”
“They are eaten by bears, and scalped by Indians, and drowned in places like the Devil’s Punch Bowl, and chewed up by eagles, and slaughtered by half-breeds!” replied the clerk. “And the wonder of it all is,” he continued, “that they seem to like it!”
When the stew was simmering merrily on the coals and the coffee was bubbling not far away, Ned began bringing out the dishes and clearing away the litter of the fire.
“I suppose,” he said after a time, “that the others will be back for supper. It seems to me that they are making a long trip to the Devil’s Punch Bowl.”
“I know why they’re staying away such a long time,” Harry cut in, with a grin. “They’re up on top of the mountain waving the stone flag on the cliff. That’s a cheerful job, too.”
“My dear sir!” almost gasped Gilroy. “My information is to the effect that the flag on the cliff is really carved out of stone!”