"If I'd expected to be alone," explained Hazletine, "I wouldn't have brought this stuff with me, but we may not see a maverick or any game all the way home. I wouldn't mind it, but I don't s'pose you are used to it." "I should say not," replied Jack, as well as he could, while his mouth was filled with bread, meat and milk; "I'm hungry enough to eat a mule." "And I feel as if I could chew his saddle," added Fred, laboring under the same difficulty in speaking clearly. "If our appetites keep up at this rate, there will be a shrinkage among the cattle in Wyoming before we go home." "What do you mean by a maverick?" asked Jack of their guide. "It's an unbranded cow or calf that don't b'long to nobody, and consequently it don't make no difference whether nobody or somebody brands or kills it." The rhetoric of this sentence may not have been faultless, but its meaning was clear to the boys. They ate until they wished no more, and were vastly relieved to note that something was left for another meal. "That'll see us through till morning," said Jack, "but how about to-morrow and the next day?" "If we don't see anything to kill, we must wait till we git to the ranch." Fred groaned. "You'll have to tie me in the saddle, for I shan't be able to sit up." The smile on the face of the guide raised the hope that he was not in earnest in making this dreadful announcement, but neither Jack nor Fred were quite easy in mind. The halt was less than an hour, when the three were in the saddle again. Hazletine, instead of pressing directly toward the ranch that was their destination, bore to the left, thus approaching the Wind River range. "There's a little settlement off to the right," he said, "of the name of Sweetwater; we could reach it by night, but it takes us a good many miles out of our path, and there's nothing to be gained by losing the time." "Are you following a straight course to the ranch?" "Pretty near; but I'm edging to the left, toward the foot-hills, 'cause there's better camping-ground over there." This was satisfactory, and the youths were not the ones to question a decision of so experienced a guide and mountaineer. Besides, they had hope that one reason for the slight change of course was that it increased the chance of obtaining game. For the present, the question of food supply was the most absorbing one that demanded attention. Other matters could wait, but a sturdy, growing lad finds his appetite something whose cravings can be soothed only by the one method that nature intended. CHAPTER III. ON GUARD. The beautiful weather continued unchanged throughout the afternoon. As the sun declined in the sky there was a perceptible coolness in the air, but the exercise of riding removed all necessity for using their blankets.