"There's your chance for a lion," said Schoverling, as the Indians cast a glance at him. Charlie shrugged his shoulders, watching the animal with eager interest.
"What's the use in killing him, General?" he replied. "We don't want his skin particularly, and he's no good for food. How about it, Jack?"
The other's hand fell from his rifle-butt.
"Of course, Chuck. He won't attack us, I suppose?"
"You'd like the excuse, eh?" laughed the explorer. "No, he won't attack us. He's probably got his dinner in that thicket, and heard us coming. It might be of advantage to the sheep ranchers hereabouts to kill him, but certainly not to us."
They rode on, leaving the tawny beast still gazing after them. The Indians were keenly disappointed over not shooting the lion, but neither boy had cared to do so. They had been too well trained to slaughter needlessly; Jack, in particular, had no small share of the Cree feeling that animals are but "little brothers," and more than once thereafter Charlie heard him mutter the Indian's apology for taking life, as he shot.
Upon rejoining the wagons a halt was made, Gholab Singh taking charge of the gazelles. After a good dinner the four white men rode on ahead, following the rude track across the veldt, and the wagons were speedily out of sight.
"This looks a whole lot like the Alberta and Montana country," declared Charlie as they rode along. "With those hills off in the distance, and the dry gullies fringed with trees, a fellow might think he was just pushing across our own range land. Wouldn't this be a swell cow country, Jack?"
"Looks like it," rejoined the Cree. "Look at those ostriches! Isn't that a ranch, up there among those buttes?"
By the aid of their glasses they could see a small ranch-house, a good four miles away, but clear-cut and distinct in the rarefied atmosphere of the plateau. White dots were scattered near by, which Schoverling declared were sheep.