en rich in dogs. No other band of
their size had more, although their failure to find buffaloes had
already begun to have its effect upon the number of their barking stock.
Not a dog had been wasted by feeding him to the other dogs, but the
human beings had not been allowed to starve, and after the march began
towards the mountains there was less and less noise in that camp night
after night.

There was no help for it; the ponies ate the grass up at the spring, and
then one of them had to be eaten, while the warriors rode all around the
neighborhood vainly hunting for something better and not so expensive.
They did secure a few rabbits and sage-hens and one small antelope, but
all the signs of the times grew blacker and blacker, and it was about as
well to kill and eat the remaining ponies as to let them die of
starvation. A sort of apathy seemed to fall upon everybody, old and
young, and the warriors hardly felt like doing any more hunting. Now at
last they sat down to starve, without a dog or pony left, and with no
prospect that game of any kind would come into camp to be killed. It is
a curious fact, but whole bands of Indians, and sometimes whole tribes,
get into precisely that sort of scrape almost every year. Now it is one
band, and now it is another, and there would be vastly more of it if it
were not for the United States Government.

There was nothing droll, nothing funny, nothing that was not savagely
sad, about the Nez Perces' camp that September morning. Every member of
the band, except two, was loafing around the lodges hopelessly and
helplessly doing nothing, and miserably giving the matter up.

CHAPTER II

A YOUNG HERO

Away from the camp a long mile, and down in the edge of the dry, hot,
desolate plain, there was a wide spread of sage-bushes. They were larger
than usual, because of having ordinarily a better supply of water sent
them from the mountains than if they had settled further out. In among
such growths are apt to be found sage-hens and rabbits, and sometimes
antelopes, but the warriors had decided that they had hunted out all of
the game that had been there, and had given the bushes up. Two of the
members of the band who were not warriors had not arrived at the same
conclusion, and both of these were among the "sage-brush" that morning.
The first had been greatly missed among the lodges, and had been much
hunted for and shouted after, for he was the largest and most
intelligent dog