CHAPTER V. THE FIRST FRESH MEAT.
All day long the two travelled steadily forward, stopping only once or twice to look at the packs, and to smoke. The pack horses followed their leader pretty well, and gave Jack little trouble, so that he was free to look about him and enjoy the bright sun, the cool breeze, and the birds and animals that from time to time showed themselves near them. There was no trail, but Hugh seemed to be travelling north without any land marks to guide him. During one of their halts Jack asked Hugh where they would camp that night.
"Well, we can camp most anywhere, for we'll find plenty of water toward the end of the afternoon. We'll either come on La Bonté, or on some little creek running into it. There's good feed anywhere, and wood enough for us, too. I reckon we'll have to picket all the horses to-night, and maybe every night for the next week, but after that it will be enough if we picket three of 'em, and let the other three drag their ropes. After they once get used to being together they ain't none of 'em likely to wander off, without the whole bunch goes."
"It would be pretty bad if we were to lose our horses, wouldn't it, Hugh?"
"It sure would," was the reply; "there's mighty few things that's worse than being left afoot on the prairie. I often wonder how it was in the old times, when one of the Companies would send a man off to go on foot two or three hundred miles, with no grub, and one blanket and a copper kettle, and maybe twelve balls."
"How do you mean, Hugh; twelve balls?"
"Why, don't you know," said Hugh, "in them days, when a man worked for one of the Fur Companies they only gave him just so much powder and lead. Of course, ammunition came high then, and they might send a man off to make a long journey on foot and not give him any grub, and just six or eight or ten charges for his gun, expecting him to kill whatever he ate. Travelling in this country in them days couldn't have been much fun."
"I should think not. But suppose such a man met Indians, and had to fight; what would he do then?"