woods a leetle, we wun’t starve yit awhile. Plumb full o’ squirrels an’ grouse the nigh woods is.”
Uncle Adzi lowered the “grub box” down to Martha. She quickly unfastened the sides and raised them on the sliding supports to form the dinner table. From the shelves inside the box she began taking their scant provisions—flour enough for one more baking of bread, a few small pieces of jerky (dried buffalo meat), some bacon rinds saved for seasoning, a small bag of salt, a quart of parched corn, and a small tin of rendered buffalo fat for frying. Two or three of the little cakes of dried yeast that she had made before starting were left; there was a good drawing of Gunpowder tea and a gallon jug, holding perhaps a teacupful of New Orleans molasses.
Groaning in spirit, Martha averted her face in her sunbonnet. Food three times a day for seven was no light matter. Even with the most careful managing she was at her wits’ end most of the time.
“Tired, honey?” Uncle Adzi inquired solicitously. The orphaned niece that he had raised from early childhood was to him the dearest thing in life.
“No time to be tired, uncle,” said Martha gayly. “I feel like shouting hymns of praise. We’re at home after our long, hard journey. It’ll be a real home, too, where hard-working folks can make a good living and their children have a chance to come through the winter alive.”
Uncle Adzi quickly caught the exultation in her tone. “No more fever an’ ager an’ younguns sick with lung fever through the turrible long cold
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