“Which?” exclaimed the Pike.
“We thank you for the good supper you have given us,” said Archie.
“No occasion, strangers; no occasion. Call often. We always leave the latch-string hanging out, and keep a bite for anybody that’s hungry.”
The boys bade the hospitable Pike good-by, shouldered their bundles and saddles and left the camp. An hour afterward they were safely settled in a camp of their own about three miles further up the stream. Of course they had plenty to talk about during the evening, the family they had just left and the misfortunes that would most likely befall them, if they trusted themselves to the guidance of the two hunters, forming the principal topics of the conversation. At eleven o’clock the horses were brought in and tied in the edge of the willows, and Archie and Eugene wrapped themselves in their blankets and went to sleep, while Fred sat up to keep an eye on the bay, and see that Zack and Silas did not steal a march on them during the night.
Morning came at length, and after the boys had drank the last of their coffee—they had scarcely enough of the article left to make the hot water taste like coffee—and eaten their last piece of cracker, they made up their bundles and prepared to resume their journey. It was high time, they told one another, that something was done in the way of hunting. They had seen no game when they passed over the ground a few days before, and unless some stray antelope or buffalo put itself in their way, they would be obliged to go supperless to bed.
The bay behaved so badly on this particular morning that Archie found it impossible to bridle him, so he made a bridle out of his lasso, passing the bight over the horse’s head behind his ears, through his mouth, tying it firmly under his lower jaw, and leading the ends over his neck and around the horn of his saddle to serve as reins. Their preparations being completed they mounted and set off at a gallop, and the first living objects they saw when they reached the top of the nearest swell were the emigrant and his family, who were following a course lying at right angles with their own.
“Good-morning to you,” cried the old man, who was marching beside one of the wagons. “Off for the Fort now?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the boys.
“Heading the wrong way, haint you?”
“No, sir; we’re heading directly toward it.”