When the rabbit thought Oscar had come near enough, he began moving away with long, deliberate bounds, and at the same moment the boy gave his pony the rein and started forward in pursuit. The animal heard the clatter of hoofs behind him, and letting out two or three sections in its hind legs,—that is the way old plainsmen express it, when they want one to understand that a rabbit has made up his mind to exhibit his best speed,—he shot ahead like an arrow from a bow, and was out of sight in a twinkling. He did not turn into the bushes, but kept straight down the path, completely distancing the pony before the latter had made a dozen jumps. “Oh, if I only had some dogs like the colonel’s!” said Oscar, after he had succeeded in making his horse comprehend that he was expected to settle down into a walk once more. “With a brace of greyhounds to run antelopes, wolves, and jack rabbits, and a well broken pointer to hunt sage hens, one could see splendid sport right here in the neighborhood of the fort. I am sure those birds would lie well to a dog, and I have not the least doubt——” The young hunter’s soliloquy was cut short by the sight of an apparition in blue flannel and buckskin which just then came into view. It proved, on second look, to be a man dressed in the garb of a hunter; but such a man and such a garb Oscar had never seen before. No description could do them justice. The man belonged on the plains, that was evident. So did Big Thompson, to whom Oscar had that day been introduced; but the two were as different in appearance as darkness and daylight. The one had gained Oscar’s confidence the moment he looked at him; but the sight of this man aroused a very different feeling in his breast, and caused him to bless his lucky stars that the meeting had taken place so near the fort. He was a person whom the young hunter would not have cared to meet in any lonely spot. With a muttered exclamation of anger, the man jerked his horse part way out of the path, and Oscar made haste to ride on and leave him out of sight. CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER UNEXPECTED MEETING. When two or three bends in the path had shut the stranger out from view, Oscar drew a long breath of relief and began a mental description of him. He was fully as tall as Big Thompson, as thin as a rail, and blessed with a most sneaking, hangdog cast of countenance. He was clad in a blue flannel shirt, a soldier’s overcoat, and a pair of buckskin trousers, all of which had grown dingy with age and hard usage. On his head he wore a brimless slouch hat, and on his feet a pair of ancient moccasins, and between the moccasins and the tattered bottom of his trousers—which were much too short for him—could be seen an ankle which was the color of sole-leather. His hands and the very small portion of his face that could be seen over a mass of grizzly whiskers, were of the same hue.