express with his red
handkerchief, stepped aboard, helped himself to ice-water, and rode
off again, to the speechless indignation of the conductor.

The three men had prospered in a small way, and while Joe turned
banker and recklessly loaned the attractive but unstable Johnny Nelson
a hundred dollars to help him to his feet, Sylvane and Merrifield
bought a few horses and a few head of cattle, took on shares a hundred
and fifty more, belonging to an old reprobate of a ranchman named
Wadsworth and a partner of his named Halley, and, under the shadow of
the bold peak that was a landmark for miles around, started a ranch
which they called the "Chimney Butte," and every one else called,
after their brand, the "Maltese Cross." A man named Bly who had kept a
hotel in Bismarck, at a time when Bismarck was wild, and had drifted
west with the railroad, was, that season, cutting logs for ties a
hundred and fifty miles south in the Short Pine Hills. He attempted
to float the timber down the river, with results disastrous to his
enterprise, but beneficial to the boys at Chimney Butte. A quantity of
logs perfectly adapted for building purposes stacked themselves at a
bend not an eighth of a mile from the center of their range. The boys
set them on end, stockade-fashion, packed the chinks, threw on a mud
roof, and called it "home."

Lang's cow-camp, which was to be the starting-point for the buffalo
hunt, was situated some forty-five miles to the south, in the
neighborhood of Pretty Buttes. Merrifield and the Ferrises had spent
some months there the previous winter, staying with a half-breed named
O'Donald and a German named Jack Reuter, known to the countryside as
"Dutch Wannigan," who had built the rough log cabin and used it as
their headquarters. Buffalo at that time had been plentiful there, and
the three Canadians had shot them afoot and on horseback, now and then
teasing one of the lumbering hulks into charging, for the excitement
of the "close shave" the maddened beast would provide. If there were
buffalo anywhere, there would be buffalo somewhere near Pretty Buttes.

[Illustration: Maltese Cross ranch-house.]

[Illustration: View from the door of the Maltese Cross ranch-house.]

Joe, who was of a sedentary disposition, decided that they would make
the long trip south in the buckboard, but Roosevelt protested. He saw
the need of the buckboard to carry the supplies, but he saw no reason
why he should sit in it all day. H