"As to that, I haven't quite made up my mind," said he, "but it must be somewhere near the centre of the buffalo range and not too far from the Santa Fé road. Fort Larned is about the middle of the range this season, and I've thought some of pitching our camp on Walnut Creek, about twenty miles north of the fort."
"It's now toward the last of August," continued Tom, "and our time will be out in September. We can call for our discharges now any time that we see a chance to get transportation into the States. It'll take us about a month to reach the Missouri River if we go by bull train, and that'll be about the first of October. Allowing about ten days to fit out for the return, it'll take us the rest of October to go back to the neighborhood of Fort Larned. We won't want to do much wolf skinning before the middle of November, when the winter coat begins to get good, but there'll be plenty of work to keep us busy, building, fitting up camp, and getting ready for the cold weather. It won't do for us to have our camp too close to Fort Larned or the Santa Fé road, for around there buffalo and wolves will be scarce, but we want to be near enough to call for our mail occasionally. Besides that, if Indians should be troublesome it's a good thing to be nigh to Uncle Sam's soldiers."
"They say," put in Jack, "that there's plenty of otter and beaver in Walnut Creek."
"Yes," replied Tom, "we'll be apt to find some of them, but they're nothing like as plenty as they used to be. All those timbered creeks used to have lots of beaver and otter in them, and we'll find some of them, but our best hold will be wolfskins. They are plentiest and easiest to get. We'll take a few steel traps along to try for otter and beaver. We'll take anything we can in the way of fur."
CHAPTER II
WE GET OUR DISCHARGES
The next day Tom came to me looking rather serious, and I saw that he had something on his mind, and when he had gotten me alone he explained what this was.
"I've been thinking it over, Peck," he said, "and I've pretty near made up my mind that we'd better drop Jack and either pick up another man or else you and me go it without a third man. I am afraid that Jack's fondness for liquor will get him into trouble and so make trouble for us. I hate to go back on him, for he's a rattlin' good fellow when he is out of the reach of whiskey, but, when he can get it, he's a regular drunkard."
"That's so, Tom," I answered; "but when we get started back to the plains we'll soon have him where he can't get whiskey, and then he'll be all right. I think we can manage him by making him turn over all his money except a few dollars to you or to me, and when his money is gone we'll see that he gets no more. If we can get him to promise that after he gets through he will let liquor alone, he will do it. Jack prides himself on being a man of his word."