"Why," said Jack, "what horse are you going to ride?"
"Never you mind," said Hugh; "you'll see after a while."
When they went out of the lodge, the dim light in the eastern sky showed that the day was about to break. At one end of the camp there was a continuous trampling of hoofs, which Hugh said was caused by the hunters beginning to leave the camp. Jack hurried to Pawnee and put the saddle on him, and Joe brought up the new horse, naked except for a thong knotted about his lower jaw, and stood by its right side ready to mount. When Pawnee was saddled, Jack looked around for Hugh, but he was nowhere to be seen.
"Come on," said Joe, "let's go over to where the hunters are gathering; Hugh told me that we should go on and that he would join us there."
The boys mounted and galloped to the end of the camp, joined a throng of men and boys, who, passing across the valley, climbed the bluffs, and on the upper prairie stopped with the crowd that was waiting there. Most of the men were sitting on the ground holding the ropes of their horses which fed close to them. Out toward the prairie sat a line of twenty men, and Jack noticed that no one passed these men. All the hunters stayed between them and the stream.
"Why don't they start, Joe?" he said.
"They can't," said Joe, "until the soldiers tell 'em to go. You see those men sitting there on the outside of the crowd, they are the soldiers, and everybody has to do just what they say. If a man gets in front of them they drive him back right off, and if he don't go when he is told, three or four of them will take their quirts and give him a mighty good licking."
"What's the sense of that," said Jack. "If I want to go ahead, why can't I?"
"Well," said Joe, "you see if everybody could start off when he wanted to, and began to chase buffalo, the first few men would scare them, and they'd begin to run, and the men that came after might not get any chance to kill. You see some people are riding fast horses, and some people slow ones, and the soldiers try to keep everybody back until the time comes for the charge, so that every man will have nearly the same chance."
"Well," said Jack, "that does seem fair."