d a quick eye,
and after two or three days' hard practising, he made a very good
attempt at throwing the rope in the right place. Day after day he went
at it, until one never-to-be-forgotten morning he also succeeded in
lariating Senor as he trotted by. This was a great achievement, and
quite repaid Jack for the trouble of practising so hard to accomplish
it.

One place that pleased Jack very much was a prairie-dog village close
by. Many an hour did he spend watching the fearless little prairie
dogs, who came out of their holes and barked defiantly at him like so
many cheeky puppies, until the tears ran down his face from laughing at
their antics. Sometimes for fun Jack pretended to throw stones at
them, and the instant he raised his arm they disappeared down their
holes as if by magic, but peeped out again in a minute or two, quite
ready to venture forth again.

Jack saw a great many rattlesnakes when he wandered about with Pedro on
the prairie. He was very much afraid of them--and no wonder, for their
poisonous bite is often fatal. Pedro was so familiar with them from
his childhood, that he did not mind them in the least, and killed them
by an extraordinary native trick. He would fearlessly follow a
retreating snake, seize it by the tail, swing it rapidly round, and
with a dexterous twist of his wrist would crack it like a whip, and
dislocate its spine. Being thus rendered helpless, the reptile was
easily despatched. As a rule, they tried to escape, but if by chance
one showed fight, it was harder to kill, as it would twist itself up in
a coil, shaking its rattles noisily, with its head out ready to spring
and strike.

Jack had a boy's love for possessing things, and in a short time, with
Pedro's help, had a small collection of treasures to carry away with
him. He found plenty of rattles on the prairie, as the snakes cast off
their rattles every year, and Pedro gave him a skin of a horned toad, a
curious creature covered with tiny horns all over its body.

One day Pedro killed a strange-looking animal called a skunk. It was
very handsome, like a large black-and-white striped cat with a
magnificent bushy tail, but it had such a disagreeable smell it made
Jack feel ill.

'You surely can't skin that nasty thing?' he asked.

'Wait and see,' returned Pedro, carrying the dead animal towards a
creek. 'I'll show you how the Indians skin 'em.'

He put the skunk quite under the water and kept it there while