"I guess it's happy because it isn't in the bone-pile," said Ollie.
We went over to it, and found it so tame that it allowed Ollie to pet it as much as he pleased. The man who owned it told us that he had found it among the Sand Hills, with one foot caught in a little bridge on the railroad, where it had apparently tried to cross. He rescued it just before a train came along.
We left Rushville after a rather longer stop for noon than we usually made. Nothing worthy of mention occurred during the afternoon, and that night we camped on the edge of another small town, called Hay Springs.
"I don't know," said Jack, "whether or not they really have springs here that flow with water and hay, or how it got its funny name. If there are that kind of springs, I think it's a pity there can't be some of them in the Sand Hills."
Jack went over town after supper for some postage-stamps, and came back quite excited.
"Found it at last, Ollie!" he exclaimed. "Grandpa Oldberry was right."
"What--a varmint?" asked Ollie.
"A genuine varmint," answered Jack. "A regular painter. It's in a cage, to be sure, but it may get out during the night."
We all went over to see it. It was in a big box back of a hotel, and the man in charge called it a mountain-lion, and said it was caught up in the Black Hills. "Right where we're going," whispered Ollie. The animal was, I presume, really a jaguar, and was a big cat three or four feet long.
We were off again the next morning, looking forward eagerly to the camp for the night, which we expected would be at Chadron, and where our course would change to the north into Dakota again, this time on the extreme western edge, and carry us up to the mountains. Most of the day we travelled through a rougher country, and saw many buttes--steep-sided, flat-topped mounds; and in the neighborhood of Bordeaux the road wound among scattering pine-trees.