The camp on Milk River was a pleasant one, though there was but little wood for the fires; a few small box-elder trees and a good deal of willow brush furnished the only fuel. The stream rippled pleasantly over the rocks which formed its bed, and Hugh told Jack that this was almost the only place on the course of the stream, away from the mountains, where the bottom was hard.
The next day the camp remained here, and young men scouted north of the river, looking for buffalo. A few were seen, but not enough to justify a general hunt, and Hugh expressed the opinion, that within a day or two the camp would move south to one of the streams flowing into the Marias River.
A number of the young men, who had ridden away the night before in pursuit of the enemy, had not yet returned, and Jack asked Hugh, during the morning, whether he thought that they would overtake the Indians who had attacked Fox Eye.
"No," said Hugh, "I don't reckon they will. Those Indians had a big start, and likely they saw the camp coming and knew that they would be pursued, and have ridden clean out of the country. Of course it might be such a thing as the man that Fox Eye wounded would die, and the other two might hide his body somewhere, but I don't believe that these young men that have followed them, will see anything at all of the Indians."
"I would like to have gone off with those fellows," said Jack.
"Yes," said Hugh, "I knew you wanted to, but there would have been no sense in doing it; you'd just have had a long, hard ride, and maybe broken down your horse, all for nothing. I have seen young men start off like that more than fifty times I bet, and they hardly ever come back with anything to show for the trouble they've had."
Toward the middle of the day, the soldiers who had started off the afternoon before, began to come into the camp, stringing along one after another, on tired, stumbling ponies. They reported that nothing had been seen of the enemy, although they had ridden hard in the direction they had taken, following the trail until after dark.
"There," said Hugh to Jack, "what did I tell you? You see they've just had a wild goose chase, and haven't done anything at all. Now I'll tell you what we'll do. You and Joe and me'll go out this afternoon, just before sundown, and you and Joe take your bows and arrows, and we'll see if we can't kill a bull."
Some time before this, Hugh had traded with one of the young men of the camp, for a number of arrows, and Jack had been practicing with the Assinaboine's bow and with these new arrows for some time, so that he was now a pretty fair shot. When he had first obtained the bow, Joe had made him some blunt-headed arrows, and the two boys, going out on the prairie near the camp, had practised shooting until Jack was fairly skillful, although, of course, he could not approach Joe in marksmanship. His efforts to learn how to shoot had been a source of great delight to the small boys of the camp, who enjoyed following him about, laughing at his bad shooting, and then exhibiting to him their own skill.
The accuracy with which these little shavers could use the bow was a constant source of astonishment to Jack. They would watch him shoot at his mark a few times, hailing each miss with derisive yells, and then some naked little fellow, not half his height, would rush up to him, gesticulating and pointing, and then, seemingly without effort or aim, would plant three or four arrows in quick succession, in the very mark that Jack had been missing.