landscape of glaring
light covered with black spots. A coyote sat on a buffalo skull
on top of the next hill and looked at us. A little owl flitted by
and disappeared in one of the shadows.

"This is like being adrift in an open boat," I said to Ollie.
"We must hurry on and catch the Rattletrap."

"I'm in the open boat," answered Ollie. "You're just simply
swimming about without even a life-preserver on."

We turned and started for the trail. We found it, but we had
spent more time in the hills than we realized, and before we had
gone far it began to grow dark. We waded on, and at last saw
Jack's welcome camp-fire. When we came up we smelled grouse
cooking, and he said:

"While you fellows were chasing about and getting lost I
gathered in a brace of fat grouse. What you want to do next time
is to take along your hat full of oats, and perhaps you can coax
the antelope to come up and eat."

The camp was near another railroad station called Eli. We had
been gradually working north, and were now not over three or four
miles from the Dakota line; but Dakota here consisted of nothing
but the immense Sioux Indian Reservation, two or three hundred
miles long.

The next morning Jack complained of not feeling well.

"What's the matter, Jack?" I asked.

"Gout," answered Jack, promptly. "I'm too good a cook for
myself. I'm going to let you cook for a few days, and give my
system a rest."

[Illustration: Dark Doings of the Cook]

This seemed very funny to Ollie and me, who had been eating
Jack's cooking for two or three weeks. The fact was that the
gouty Jack was the poorest cook that ever looked into a
kettle, and he knew it well enough. He could make one
thing--pancakes--nothing else. They were usually fairly good,
though he would sometimes get his recipes mixed up, and use his
sour-milk one when the milk was sweet, or his sweet-milk one when
it was sour; but we got accustomed to this. Then it was hard to
spoil young and tender fried grouse, and the stewed plums had
been good, though he had got some hay mixed with them; but the
flavor of hay is not bad. We bought frequently of "canned goods"
at the stores, and this he could not injure a great deal.

We did not pay much attention to Jack's threat about stopping
cooking. He got breakfast after a fashion, mixing sour and sweet
milk as an experiment, and though he didn't eat much himself, we
did not think he was going to be sick. But after walking a