After that very successful excursion the brothers sometimes spent whole mornings or portions of the afternoons at some place on the creek or river, when the work on the ranche was not pushing, and so expert did they become with hook and line, that the family was never at a loss for a supply of fish during the proper seasons. Joe was a close observer of nature, and he very quickly learned the habits of all the animals, birds, and fish that were common to the region where he lived. Being the eldest son, too, he was intrusted with a small but excellent rifle and a shot-gun which his father bought one morning in the village, on the fifteenth anniversary of his birthday. He would get up very early in the morning and with his pony and the hounds have many a lively chase after the little cottontail rabbit or the larger "jack," improperly so called, for it is really the hare. The rabbit burrows in the ground, while the jack-rabbit does not, but makes his nest on the top, in a bunch of grass, or in the holes in the rocky ledges of the bluffs that fringe nearly every stream on the great plains. Out on the open prairies the grouse congregated in large flocks at certain seasons, and in every covert in the woods the quail could be found. Joe had really handled a gun long before he left Vermont, but the superior chance for practice out on the ranche soon made him a magnificent shot; consequently the table at the ranche was never without game if the family desired it. Beside the smaller game I have mentioned, there were immense herds of buffalo and antelope, and in some places in the deep woods was the only long-tailed specimen of the genus felis on the continent,--the cougar, or panther. All the wildcats, so called, are lynxes, with short tails. With one of the first mentioned Joe once had a severe tussle, which nearly proved disastrous to him. It happened in this way. One afternoon in November shortly after the cabin was finished and the family had moved in, he was out on the range with his father's horse, the Spencer carbine, and about twenty rounds of ammunition. Even at that early stage of his life at Errolstrath he was always careful never to ride far away from home, without taking a gun with him; for he was always sure to see something in the shape of game worth killing for the table; and as its main support in that particular very soon depended on his prowess as a hunter, he was always on the lookout. Joe had ridden a long way from the cabin. He had really forgotten how far away he was and was becoming very thirsty, for the day had been warm, so he commenced to hunt for water. He was riding along the bank of the Smoky Hill in the thickest of the timber which grows on its banks, and by certain signs he had studied since he had lived on the ranche, knew that he was near some springs, though he had never been in that vicinity before.