"Tobacco don't come under the head of general supplies, and, as Peck don't use it, every man will have to buy his own tobacco." "How about whiskey?" asked Jack, for he had a weakness for liquor. Tom answered him quickly: "There'll be no whiskey taken along if I am to have any say in the plans for the expedition. When we leave the settlements you'll have to swear off until we get back again; and that reminds me that when we get our 'final statements' cashed it will be a good idea for you to turn over your money to Peck, all except a small allowance for a spree, if you must have one." Jack was forced to yield to the decision of the majority that whiskey should form no part of our supplies. "Seems to me," I began, to change the subject, "that we've got to decide on where we'll go. Where do you think we'd better locate our winter camp, Tom?" "As to that, I haven't quite made up my mind," said he, "but it must be somewhere near the centre of the buffalo range and not too far from the Santa Fé road. Fort Larned is about the middle of the range this season, and I've thought some of pitching our camp on Walnut Creek, about twenty miles north of the fort." "It's now toward the last of August," continued Tom, "and our time will be out in September. We can call for our discharges now any time that we see a chance to get transportation into the States. It'll take us about a month to reach the Missouri River if we go by bull train, and that'll be about the first of October. Allowing about ten days to fit out for the return, it'll take us the rest of October to go back to the neighborhood of Fort Larned. We won't want to do much wolf skinning before the middle of November, when the winter coat begins to get good, but there'll be plenty of work to keep us busy, building, fitting up camp, and getting ready for the cold weather. It won't do for us to have our camp too close to Fort Larned or the Santa Fé road, for around there buffalo and wolves will be scarce, but we want to be near enough to call for our mail occasionally. Besides that, if Indians should be troublesome it's a good thing to be nigh to Uncle Sam's soldiers." "They say," put in Jack, "that there's plenty of otter and beaver in Walnut Creek." "Yes," replied Tom, "we'll be apt to find some of them, but they're nothing like as plenty as they used to be. All those timbered creeks used to have lots of beaver and otter in them, and we'll find some of them, but our best hold will be wolfskins. They are plentiest and easiest to get. We'll take a few steel traps along to try for otter and beaver. We'll take anything we can in the way of fur." CHAPTER II WE GET OUR DISCHARGES The next day Tom came to me looking rather serious, and I saw that he had something on his mind, and when he had gotten me alone he explained what this was.