ice of that article of food. Side-meat, in the South
and West, is the thin flank of a porker, salted and smoked after the
fashion of hams, and in those parts of the Southwest it was (and
probably is) the staple article of food among the people. It is sold
in long, unattractive-looking slabs; and when Sandy heard its name
mentioned, his disgust as well as his wonder was kindled.

"Side-meat?" he repeated, with a rising inflection. "Why, I thought we
were going to live on game,--birds and buffalo and the like!
Side-meat? Well, that makes me sick!"

The two men laughed, and Mr. Howell said,--

"Why, Sandy, you are bent on hunting and not on buckling down to farm
work. How do you suppose we are going to live if we have nothing to
eat but wild game that we kill, and breadstuffs and vegetables that we
buy?"

Sandy had thought that they might be able to step out into the woods
or prairie, between times, as it were, and knock down a few head of
game when the day's work was done, or had not begun. When he said as
much, the two heads of the party laughed again, and even Charlie
joined in the glee.

"My dear infant," said his father, seriously, but with a twinkle in
his eye, "game is not so plenty anywhere as that; and if it were, we
should soon tire of it. Now side-meat 'sticks to the ribs,' as the
people hereabouts will tell you, and it is the best thing to fall back
upon when fresh meat fails. We can't get along without it, and that is
a fact; hey, Charlie?"

The rest of the party saw the wisdom of this suggestion, and Sandy was
obliged to give up, then and there, his glowing views of a land so
teeming with game that one had only to go out with a rifle, or even a
club, and knock it over. But he mischievously insisted that if
side-meat did "stick to the ribs," as the Missourians declared, they
did not eat much of it, for, as a rule, the people whom they met were
a very lank and slab-sided lot. "Clay-eaters," their new acquaintance
from Quindaro said they were.

"Clay-eaters?" asked Charlie, with a puzzled look. "They are
clayey-looking in the face. But it can't be possible that they
actually eat clay?"

"Well, they do, and I have seen them chewing it. There is a fine, soft
clay found in these parts, and more especially south of here; it has a
greasy feeling, as if it was a fatty substance, and the natives eat it
just as they would candy. Why, I should think that it would form a
sand-bar inside of a man, after awhile;