When they reached the house Jack and Charley skinned the cat and pegged the hide out on the grass to dry. After this had been done, Jack took Bess and Charley and showed them the calf elk, which was now quite big and had lost its summer coat and its spots. Bess admired it greatly. "It isn't nearly as pretty," she said, "as the young antelope, and it carries its head in a clumsy way, but it seems strong and graceful, and isn't it tame?"
"Yes," said Jack, "it's tame enough, and it looks nicely enough, but it's a stupid beast; it seems to have no sense, and not to care for anything except just eating. I like even my ducks better than this elk. Let's go and try to find them; they wander about so that I never know just where they are; but maybe we can find them somewhere along the brook." After a good deal of searching and calling, the ducks were discovered a long distance down the brook. They were now as large as old birds, and fully feathered, and were pretty, graceful little creatures. Charley declared that the small ones were teal, for he had killed some like them the fall before.
"Yes," said Jack, "they're teal all right enough; I looked them up in my Uncle Will's bird book. They're what the book calls cinnamon teal. It's a kind of duck that we don't have in the east; it only lives out here in the Rocky Mountains and toward the Pacific Ocean."
That night Bess had a fine time telling the story of how the bob-cat had been killed. It had been started from near to the trail by the dog, which followed it so fast that it ran up a tree almost before Bess saw it. Then she had called to the others.
As Jack was going to bed that night Mr. Sturgis shook hands with him and said: "It was very nice of you, Jack, to let the little girl shoot that bob-cat, instead of doing it yourself. I like to see a boy do a thing of that kind."
CHAPTER XXV
AN ELK HUNT
At breakfast next morning, Mr. Powell said to Hugh: "Do you suppose you could take them two boys up on to the mountain and kill three or four elk? I want to talk with Mr. Sturgis to-day about getting some of these saddle horses of his, and I'd like to go on home to-morrow, but I want to take some meat with me. If you and the boys can kill it, I'll stay down here at the ranch while you're gone."
"Well," said Hugh, "I don't know why the three of us can't kill what you need, as well as four, and if Mr. Sturgis hasn't anything else for me to do, I'll take the boys up on the hill and we'll see what we can find."
Mr. Sturgis told them by all means to go. Charley got his rifle out of the wagon, Hugh and Jack caught and saddled a couple of pack horses, and they were soon climbing the trail.