d hold no hoofprints to betray them, but the Kid never noticed. He
was thinking how nice it would be to have a bear cub for a pet. But it
was funny that the Happy Family had never found him one, if there were
any in the country.

He turned to put the question direct to H. J. Owens, I but that
gentleman forestalled him.

"You wait here a minute, Buck, while I ride back on this hill a little
ways to see if those fellows are on our trail," he said, and rode off
before the Kid could ask him the question.

The Kid waited obediently. He saw H. J. Owens get off his horse and go
sneaking up to the brow of the hill, and take some field glasses out
of his pocket and look all around over the prairie with them. The sight
tingled the Kid's blood so that he almost forgot about the bear cub. It
was almost exactly like fighting Injuns, like Uncle Gee-gee told about
when he wasn't cross.

In a few minutes Owens came back to the Kid, and they went on slowly,
keeping always in the low, grassy places where there would be no tracks
left to tell of their passing that way. Behind them a yellow-brown cloud
drifted sullenly with the wind. Now and then a black flake settled past
them to the ground. A peculiar, tangy smell was in the air--the smell of
burning grass.

H. J. Owens related a long, full-detailed account of how he had been
down in the hills along the river, and had seen the old mother bear
digging ants out of a sand-hill for her cubs.

"I know--that's jes' 'zactly the way they do!" the Kid interrupted
excitedly. "Daddy Chip seen one doing it on the Musselshell one time. He
told me 'bout it."

H. J. Owens glanced sidelong at the Kid's flushed face, smiled his
twisted smile and went on with his story. He had not bothered them,
he said, because he did not have any way of carrying both cubs, and he
hated to kill them. He had thought of Buck, and how he would like a pet
cub, so he had followed the bear to her den and had come away to get a
sack to carry them in, and to tell Buck about it.

The Kid never once doubted that it was so. Whenever any of the Happy
Family found anything in the hills that was nice, they always thought
of Buck, and they always brought it to him. You would be amazed at the
number of rattlesnake rattles, and eagle's claws, and elk teeth, and
things like that, which the Kid possessed and kept carefully stowed away
in a closet kept sacred to his uses.

"'Course you'd 'member I wanted a baby bear cub; for a pe