-hide now. But they don't like it."

"Neither do I," said Jesse.

CHAPTER XVI

OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER

"Not so bad, not so bad at all," was John's comment as they all sat
around the camp fire on the evening of July 5th. They had spent two
pleasant days in town and now were forty miles out into the Plains
country above the railroad; they had pitched camp at the edge of a
willow-lined stream which ran between steep bluffs whose tops rose level
with the plain. The smoke of their camp fire drifted down the troughlike
valley from their encampment. The boys had found enough clean wood for a
broiling fire, and John just now had taken off the thick beefsteak which
they had brought along with them.

"You will observe that this is from the tenderloin of the three-year-old
fat buffalo cow that I killed this morning," said he. "I always did like
buffalo. We will break open some marrow bones about midnight, and I'll
grill some boss ribs for breakfast."

"And for luncheon," added Jesse, joining readily in the make-believe,
"we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in
the breaks of the Missouri. Not so bad!"

Their friend from Mandan looked at them, smiling. "I hope you haven't
shot any tame sheep," said he. "No, not a bad camp, except that the
mosquitoes are eating me alive. How do these boys stand it the way they
do?"

"Oh, they're tough," laughed Uncle Dick. "We've had so many trips up
North together, where the mosquitoes really are bad, we've got immune,
so we don't mind a little thing like this. It takes two or three years
to get over fighting them. For the first year they almost drive a man
crazy, up there in Alaska."

"I expect, sir, you'd better go inside the tent with our uncle
to-night," said Rob. "We have our buffalo robes and bed rolls and don't
need any tent, but if you drop the bar to the tent door, and take a wet
sock to the mosquitoes that get in, I think you'll not be bothered."

"But how will you sleep, outside?"

"Oh, we pull a corner of the blanket over our faces if they get too bad.
By nine or ten o'clock they'll be gone--until sunup; then they're the
worst. If we had camped up on the rim it would have been better."

"I'm going up on the rim after supper," said Jesse, "to see if I can't
find an antelope--I suppose you'd call it a jack rabbit. I saw three
coveys of prairie chickens cross the road to-day. If it was legal, now!"

Indeed, an hour later the youngest of