Around the camp-fire, White Wolf and several of the oldest warriors told how that region once belonged to their tribe. Their largest village had been two hundred miles farther north, on the Republican, and many times they had come down to where they were now camped, to hunt the buffalo, or steal horses from the Cheyennes, their hereditary enemies. They told how they were once a powerful nation, but the white man had stolen their lands, and now, only a small band, they were obliged to live on a reservation set apart for them by the Government. It was a wild region where Joe now found himself. All night long could be heard the cry of the lynx, which sounded like that of an infant. The wolves howled in the timbered recesses of the creek, but Joe slept well, rolled up in his blankets in the chief's lodge, and it was morning before he thought he had been asleep an hour. At the first streak of dawn, the Indians were out. White Wolf said that the mouth of the Walnut used to be a favorite place for elk. They might still haunt the stream; he would send out some of his hunters, and perhaps they would have elk for their breakfast. He selected two of the warriors, who started out on foot to see if they could find any game. Joe, of course, accompanied them. They stalked cautiously as only an Indian can--Joe had mastered the art perfectly--along the bank of the stream, not a stick breaking under their feet, nor the sound of the rustle of a dead leaf being heard, so quietly did they tread. At last, arriving at a bend of the creek, where the timber grows the thickest, the Indian in the lead stopped abruptly, put his hand out behind him, the sign for the others to halt, and taking Joe's carbine from the boy's shoulder, got down on his belly and crawled forward as noiselessly as a snake. Suddenly he raised the gun, and seeming to take a careless aim, pulled the trigger, and immediately Joe and the other warrior saw four elk rush past them, down the prairie, and out of sight. As he turned to Joe and the other warrior, telling them at the same time to come on, the Indian who had fired said in his own language, "We'll have elk for breakfast now." They followed him into the timber, and there, not thirty yards from where he had stood when he fired the carbine, was an elk, about two years old, dead as a stone wall! The work of skinning the elk did not take more than ten minutes, and it was cut up into conveniently sized pieces, and each one of the hunters packed his portion to camp, less than a mile distant.