ad
them all carried to camp. He and Antonio followed the buffalo and shot
them down, while two of the peons skinned the animals, cut up the meat,
and packed it to camp. There, under the hands of the third, it
underwent the further process of being "jerked," that is, cut into thin
slices and dried in the sun.

The hunt promised to be profitable. Carlos would no doubt obtain as
much "tasajo" as he could carry home, besides a large supply of hides,
both of which found ready sale in the towns of New Mexico.

On the third day, however, the hunters noticed a change in the behaviour
of the buffalo. They had suddenly grown wild and wary. Now and then
vast gangs passed them, running at full speed, as if terrified and
pursued! It was not Carlos and his companion that had so frighted them.
What then had set them a-running?

Carlos conjectured that some Indian tribe was in the neighbourhood
engaged in hunting them.

His conjecture proved correct. On ascending a ridge which gave him a
view of a beautiful valley beyond, his eye rested upon an Indian
encampment.

It consisted of about fifty lodges, standing like tents along the edge
of the valley, and fronting towards the stream. They were of a conical
form, constructed of a framework of poles set in a circle, drawn
together at their tops, and then covered with skins of the buffalo.

"Waco lodges!" said the cibolero, the moment his practised eye fell upon
them.

"Master," inquired Antonio, "how do you tell that?" Antonio's
experience fell far short of that of his master, who from childhood had
spent his life on the prairies.

"How!" replied Carlos, "by the lodges themselves."

"I should have taken it for a Comanche camp," said the half-blood. "I
have seen just such lodges among the `Buffalo-eaters.'"

"Not so, Anton," rejoined his master. "In the Comanche lodge the poles
meet at the top, and are covered over with the skins, leaving no outlet
for smoke. You observe it is not so with these. They are lodges of the
Wacoes, who, it is true, are allies of the Comanches."

Such was in reality the fact. The poles, though bent so as to approach
each other at the top, did not quite meet, and an open hole remained for
the passage of smoke. The lodge, therefore, was not a perfect cone, but
the frustum of one; and in this it differed from the lodge of the
Comanches.

"The Wacoes are not hostile," remarked the cibolero. I think we have
nothing to fear from them. No