They were to make a very early start in the morning, so, as soon as "taps" had sounded, which meant that all lights must be put out and the soldiers retire to their tents, the Colonel suggested to Joe that he had better go to bed, while he would sit up a while and write out his report to the commander at Fort Harker. Calling in the orderly, the Colonel told him to fix up a sleeping-place for the boy. The man spread four heavy buffalo robes on the floor of the tent, and putting two blankets on top, the bed was ready for Joe, who tumbled into it and was soon fast asleep. When the trumpeter sounded the reveille, at the first streak of dawn the next morning, the Colonel, who had already risen, called Joe, who bounded out of his soft bed like a cat. Breakfast was ready in a few moments, and after he and the Colonel had eaten, and the latter had given his orders to the officer who was to command the camp during his absence, Joe and he started out on foot for the hunt. The night had been cold, and although it was the middle of May, the white rime of the late frost covered the earth. It was a good omen, as the sharp footprints of the animals could be more easily distinguished. Carefully examining their rifles and cartridges as they walked briskly on, they soon struck the main branch of the Elkhorn, and continued along its margin in a southerly direction for a mile or more, when they came to a little opening. There Joe suddenly stopped, and turning to Colonel Keogh, who had on the instant also halted, said, "Doesn't that look a little deerish, Colonel?" The Colonel, though a good shot and hunter, could distinguish nothing out of the ordinary after scrutinizing the ground to which the boy had pointed. The earth looked the same everywhere in the Colonel's eyes. "Here!" said Joe, as, noticing the bewildered appearance of his new friend, he turned over a fallen cottonwood leaf with his foot. There the Colonel saw, after carefully stooping down, the very faint impress of a hoof. "Is that a fresh track, Joe?" he asked. "You may be sure it is," replied Joe, "and only about an hour old!" "Well, I want _that_ deer," said Colonel Keogh, enthusiastically. He rose from a stump on which he had been sitting for a few moments, with his rifle across his knees, and started quickly for a little patch of box-elder not a hundred yards distant. "Hold on, Colonel!" said Joe, cautiously; "the deer isn't there now. Don't you see his hoof-marks point the other way? Look, here's where he's nibbled the grass," pointing with his rifle to a strip of bunch-grass in the opposite direction from the box-elders. "Let's go on, Colonel; deer don't stay long in one spot so early in the day, and if we don't get a move on us, it may be hours before we can get a shot at 'em."