An hour more was spent in shooting at this mark, and before it was over, Jack had come to understand a great deal about his gun, and had received much praise from his teacher. "You're doing well, my son, and it won't take you long to learn how to shoot. If you pick up riding, roping and packing as easily as you do shooting, your uncle will be hiring you to work for wages before snow flies. Now let's go up to the house and wipe out the gun." After Hugh had shown Jack how to clean his rifle, and had explained to him the importance of keeping it clean, free from rust and sand, and always ready for use under all circumstances, he said, "Of course, in these days we don't have to look out for enemies like we used to in old times. Nowadays the wars are pretty much over in these parts, yet of course there's plenty of places where the Indians are bad yet, and nobody knows when they'll make trouble anywhere. Why, nobody will ever know how many people got killed there when they were building the railroad back on the plains. I scouted from Julesburg west to Cheyenne at that time, and it was an everyday matter to find two or three graders stuck full of arrows along the track. That was the time when the Pawnee scouts were guarding the road, and it was fun to see them fellows get out when there was an alarm and chase the hostiles. Them Pawnees just loved a fight, and they had never been whipped when Major North was leading them, so they did not know what fear was. They'd turn out at any time of the day or night and chase the Sioux and Cheyennes as long as their horses could run. It was a picnic for them. "I had some good friends in that camp. One fellow, especially, that they called Itching Buffalo, was brave, and he had powerful medicine. They said he had been down into one of them houses where the medicine animals have their councils. The others used to say that he couldn't be killed, and it's sure that he was always in the front of the fighting and never got hit. There's surely something queer about Indian medicine. Take old Whirlwind, the Cheyenne, in that fight he had with the Sacs. Every feather was cut from his war bonnet, but not a bullet hit him, nor his medicine that he carried on it. "But I'm forgetting that you don't know anything about these things. It's likely you will though, if you and I are much together. What I started to say was this. In old times a man's life often depended on his having his gun ready for use. If he went out for his horse, picketed close to camp, or went for wood, or down to the creek for water, he carried his gun with him, and it was always in good order and ready for use. It isn't that way here or now, but it may be so yet. So you'd better learn to keep your gun clean, and to have it with you always. It ain't much trouble to learn this, and it may save your life sometime. "Well, there comes the men with a bunch of horses. Let's go down to the corral and look 'em over." CHAPTER VII HUGH CHASED BY INDIANS