"I want to show you twelve pups that I've got at the ranch. They're little fellows yet, but I expect to get some awful good dogs out of them. I tell you a dog don't last any time at all at this sort of work. Some of 'em get cut up by the wolves, and some break their legs or sprain their shoulders, running, and some get hurt by the horses. It's a pretty rough life on a dog; but while they last they've an awful good time." Chatting thus, they covered mile after mile of prairie. Jack's horse stepped along lightly and easily. From time to time Hugh lit his pipe and smoked. Powell watched his dogs. The sun was warm, the air clear and pleasant, and Jack thought that he had never enjoyed a morning more. Suddenly, just in front of the two blue hounds that were trotting before them, a jack-rabbit bounced up and scurried away at top speed. In an instant all the dogs were running for it, and Jack and young Powell were close at their heels. It was a short run. The leading blue dog pressed the rabbit hard; he dodged in front of the second dog, and in a moment had to dodge again, which threw him into the jaws of the first and he had run his last race. It was short but exciting; doubly so to Jack who had never seen anything of the sort. Powell jumped down among the hounds and cuffed and scolded them, while he took from them the fragments of the rabbit, and then mounted, and they all went on. A little later the dogs all broke away again after a badger which showed himself on the side hill; but he dodged into his hole before they reached him, and the dogs came back, looking foolish. Powell now took from a pocket in his saddle a whip, with a handle about a foot and a half long, and a lash of eight or ten feet, and whenever a dog pressed forward ahead of the horses, he struck at it, and after a little while the whole pack followed obediently at his horse's heels. [Illustration: "THE ANIMAL LAUNCHED ITSELF FROM ITS PERCH FULL TOWARDS JACK." --_Page 131_.] It was long past noon when they reached some high hills, rough and scarred with broken bad lands, on which grew a few stunted pines and cedars. They were climbing these hills, Jack a little in advance, when he saw rise from a shelf in the rocks, a long, slim, yellow animal, which began to sneak away up a ravine.