Anyhow their advices informed them that he had packed his bullion-chests
with stones and old-iron and had parcelled out his packets of dust and
nuggets among the wagons of a long train of arena-beasts.
"We'll fool him!" Bulla boasted. "We'll nab him and hold him for a big
ransom. Also we'll not only make sure of his bullion chests in case our
information is false, or based on an intentional rumor he has given out as
a blind; but we'll get that bullion, too, if it is not in the chests, but
hidden in the wagons in the guise of dusty packets of provender for the
draft-cattle or of meat for the caged beasts. We'll get it!"
Prom his mention of the wagons we fell into talk of the increasing
difficulty of getting fresh meat for the lions and other beasts, of the
depletion of the flocks and herds along the roads from Aquileia, to Rome;
and he told me that his advices reported that the whole country near the
highways was already swept clean of all goats, sheep and cattle, except
breeding stock, milch stock and their choicest young kept for breeding.
The inhabitants could get no beef, mutton or goats' flesh for themselves;
all had gone into the maws of hyenas, tigers, wolves and the rest; and the
procurators were insisting on the farmers selling their kids, lambs,
calves, ewes and cows-in-milk, any stock, even mules and horses; any
animals fit to butcher for lion-food.
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