"Nothing but this," answered Scott, holding up a small buckskin sack fitted with drawing strings. "What is that, Bob?" "It is what I carry wherever I ride. I carry nothing else. And it is only a little bag of salt." "A bag of salt!" cried Bucks. "Do you eat salt?" "Wait and see," answered the scout. "Pull your belt up a notch. We've got a little walking to do." Scott, though of Chippewa blood, had been captured when a boy by the Sioux and, adopted into the tribe, had lived with them for years. He knew the mountains better than any man that served Stanley, and the latter trusted him implicitly--nor was the confidence ever betrayed. Walking rapidly over a low-lying divide beyond which lay a broad valley marking the course of a shallow creek, Scott paused behind a clump of cedars to scan the country. He expected to find antelope along the creek, but could see none in any direction. Half a mile more of scouting explained the absence of game, and Scott pointed out to Bucks the trail of an Indian hunting party that had passed up the valley in the morning. They were Cheyennes, Scott told his companion, three warriors and two squaws--reading the information from signs that were as plain to him as print--though Bucks understood nothing of it. In the circumstances there was nothing for it but a fresh venture, and, remounting, the Indian led the boy ten miles farther north to where the plains stretched in a succession of magnificent plateaus, toward the Sleepy Cat Mountains. "We are in real Sioux country now," observed Scott, as he again dismounted. "And we are as likely now to uncover a war party as a herd of antelope." "What should you do, Bob, if we met Sioux?" "Run," smiled Bob, with Indian terseness. Yet somehow the boy felt that Bob, in spite of what he said, would not run, and he realized for a moment the apprehension of one but newly arrived on the frontier, and still subject to tremors for his scalp. The scout took his stand near a thicket of quaking asp and almost at once sighted a band of antelope. Taking Bucks, he worked around the wind toward the band, and directed him how and when to shoot if he got a chance. Bucks, highly wrought up after the long crawl to get within range, did get a chance, and with his heart beating like a trip-hammer, covered a buck and fired. The scout shot immediately afterward, and the herd broke swiftly for the timber along the creek. But Bucks, as well as his experienced companion, had brought down an antelope. Scott, as he joined his companion, looked at him with curiosity. "Where did you learn to shoot?" "I couldn't do it again, Bob," exclaimed Bucks frankly. "The only shooting I've ever done is rabbit-shooting, or squirrel-shooting. I was lucky for once, that's all."