And it was! A few miles from where they were camped was a range of high, rocky peaks, with little or no timber upon them. These peaks were quite bare, and one in particular rose like a great pulpit high above the rest, the centre of the highest group of peaks. Up to the foot of this little group of mountains ran Dick's range, a succession of rolling swells of grass-land, studded over with groves and bunches of the red bull pines. It was a splendid, park-like country, and many a group of deer cantered away from them as they rode through it.
'You might as well shoot us something for supper, Snap,' remarked Wharton; 'I guess you're tired like the rest, but you won't have any trouble to speak of in getting a haunch of venison in this here Bull Pine Park of mine.'
'Of ours, Dick!' corrected Towzer, grinning.
'Right you are,' replied the old man; 'but I'm not a-goin' to have any sleeping partners in our firm, so just you get up off of your back, young man, and get some bread made while I cut wood for the night-fire.'
Towzer made a grimace and rolled over on to his face with a yawn, but eventually shook himself and began to make preparations for baking.
'Snap ought to make the bread, by rights,' he grumbled, 'he is such a stunner at the use of baking-powder.'
'Had you there, Snap,' said Frank; 'the young 'un has got "a rise" out of you this time.'
'Quite fair, too,' said Dick. 'I guess Snap got a pretty considerable rise out of the boys at Rosebud with that tarnation Borwick of his.'
But Snap pretended to be out of hearing, and was soon lost among the timber.
There was a good deal to do about the camp that afternoon. All the pack wanted overhauling and cleaning. Charcoal and wood-ash took too prominent a place in the composition of everything in the Cradle's load, from tea to tobacco. The frying-pans had lost their handles, and these had to be replaced by others extemporised from a split stick; the spoons had been lost, so others had to be made from birch-bark; the soup-kettle was lying as flat as a pancake under the dead pony in the brûlé, so another had to be made, and this, too, was of birch-bark.