Joe returned to the house, and puttered around until supper was ready. At the table he told of his stopping at Haystack Mound to witness the antics of a flock of cranes that had alighted on the sand knoll near there, and said he could sit and look at them all day. Of course all the family had witnessed the performance of the cranes often, for in the season scarcely a day passed that a flock did not make its appearance somewhere on the ranche. Kate said, "I used to watch them on the Canadian when I was in the Indian village, and they were about the only things that I laughed at while there. After I had been there about a month and had got pretty well acquainted, one of the boys gave me a young crane for a pet. He became so tame that he would follow me all over the village. "I kept him three months, when one morning, as I was walking down to the river with him, I saw him suddenly stop, put his head on one side, look up at the sky, and running a few steps, fly away. I watched him until he was out of sight. It was a flock of his own species that he had seen, and I did not even begin to hear their croaking until he was far out of sight." CHAPTER XVII WILD HORSES--JOE SLEEPS IN WHITE WOLF'S TENT--CAMP ON THE WALNUT--WOLVES AND LYNXES--KILL AN ELK--THE CHASE--CAPTURE OF THE BLACK STALLION--WHITE WOLF'S SKILL--BREAKING THE HORSES THE Pawnees remained on Oxhide Creek later than usual this spring. As they wanted to go on a hunt for the wild horses on the Cimarron bottom, they had to wait until the grass grew enough to furnish pasture for their own ponies on the trip. About the middle of April, White Wolf told his warriors that he would start in a few days. A runner was despatched to Errolstrath, to tell Joe the band would leave in a short time, and to be ready at a moment's notice. The runner said that when White Wolf started he wanted to be off very early in the morning, so as to make the Arkansas the first night. Joe, all anxious for the exciting trip, persuaded his mother and sisters to bake up a lot of bread, and boil hard a couple of dozen eggs for him. He told them that that would be all he wanted, as they intended to depend upon the chase, Indian fashion, for everything else; and as the country they were going over was full of buffalo, antelope, and elk, they would not suffer from lack of food. He cleaned his father's Spencer carbine, bought a box of cartridges for it, and told Kate that he intended to ride the roan which she got from the Indians and had given to him. He thought the animal was better than any the Pawnees had in their herd, though White Wolf had said that he could ride one of theirs.