CHAPTER XVII
THANKS TO THE WOLF PACK
“What have you on your mind now, Roger?” asked Dick, realizing how serious his companion had become.
As a rule Roger was a light-hearted boy, so that the change was all the more noticeable whenever he devoted himself to evolving some idea that had occurred to him.
“Oh, I was only thinking how easy it would be to get all the fresh meat we needed if only we could stay in one place,” was his reply.
“What sort of fresh meat do you mean?” continued the other.
“Four different times now,” explained Roger, “I have seen those big jack-rabbits jump out of some copse, or a crack in the rocks, and bound away. Each time, just from force of habit, my gun would fly to my shoulder, and I found myself covering the jumper; but of course I did not mean to pull the trigger.”
“No, because our ammunition is scanty, and, if we have to fire a shot, we should bag something larger than a rabbit. But, Roger, please go on and explain what you mean.”
“Only this,” the other added; “we could easily make traps, and snare some of these fat rabbits if we were in camp. Keeping on as we do, that’s out of the question. So, in the end, I suppose we must use our guns to bring down a deer, or a buffalo, if we have the good luck to run across one.”