The meat was hung up to cool where it would be out of the reach of the coyotes and the next morning, with a loaded waggon, Mr. Powell and his wife drove off toward their ranch. Bess and Charley stopped behind for a little while, talking with Jack, who promised that if he could, he would ride over to the ranch once more before he went back east.
At last the young people mounted and started. Just as they did so, Jack called out: "Do the best you can to tame those wolf puppies, Charley. I want to take one of them east with me, if I possibly can."
CHAPTER XXVI
JACK RIDES A WILD HORSE
Jack had noticed that the horns of the bull elk, killed the day before by Hugh, were white and polished, and that the rough part near the base seemed to be full of little fragments of bark, while at the very base, where the horns joined the head, there were bits of dried, thin skin, and marks of blood. He spoke to Hugh about this, and asked if these horns were not now full grown.
"Yes," said Hugh, "they're hard now, and the velvet has been rubbed off, and when the velvet is gone they don't grow no more. A bull carries his horns until along toward spring, say in March, and then they drop off. I expect likely your uncle has told you how these horns grow, and I mind that you killed a bull, yourself, along in the spring, when the horns hadn't much more than started."
"Yes," answered Jack. "Uncle Will has told me all about how the horns grow. It would be hard to believe, if one didn't know that it was so, that these great big horns grow in just a few months."
"That's what they do," said Hugh, "and as soon as they are hard, and the velvet has been cleaned off them, the bulls begin to travel about and gather up their families. It's wonderful to see the way an old bull will travel over the country, hunting it just as careful as can be, to find cows, and when he gets one or two or three, he rounds 'em up and drives 'em ahead of him over the country that he's hunting. I've watched a bull all day long, travel along the foot of a range of high hills, going up every ravine and hunting it out, just about as faithful as a hunting dog would, and a few days after, I have ridden in that same range of country and found the same old bull, with a bunch of eighteen or twenty cows and calves and heifers, that he'd managed to gather up in that time."
"This is the time of year when they whistle, isn't it, Hugh?" said Jack.
"Yes, for about a month now, sometimes for longer, you can hear 'em whistle to each other on the hills. I expect it's a kind of a brag; one saying, 'Here I am; I'm the boss of this range,' and another, on another hill, calling out, 'Here I am; I'm the boss.' I've seen it where you could hear a dozen bulls whistling at the same time. It's a mighty nice sound when you hear it a little way off, but if you're close to the bull that's calling, it sounds more like a part of the neighing of a horse, and ain't nice or pretty."