As Eugene rode through the gate the sound of laughter, which he knew came from the lieutenant’s quarters fell upon his ear. Inside the apartment was gathered a gay party, consisting of the lieutenant, Frank Nelson and some of the younger officers of the Fort. The doors and windows were open, and they could see every thing that went on outside. The lieutenant was telling some amusing story, in the midst of which he suddenly paused, and jumping to his feet hurried to the door. Eugene saw him, but pretended he did not, and reining in his horse, began looking all about the Fort as if he were in search of somebody. The lieutenant said something in a low tone to those in the room, and in a second the doors and windows were filled with heads. That was quite enough to satisfy Eugene, who turned about and would have gone out again had not the lieutenant called to him.

“Hallo, there!” he exclaimed.

“Ah! glad to see you,” said Eugene, riding up in front of the young officer’s quarters. “Hope you are enjoying your usual good health. You haven’t seen anything of Uncle Dick about here during the last hour or two, have you?”

“Whose horse is that?” demanded the lieutenant, without replying to the question.

“This?” said Eugene, innocently. “O, he’s one Archie Winters picked up a short time ago. Do you know anything about him?”

“Archie hasn’t bought him?” exclaimed the lieutenant.

“Well—yes; I believe so.”

“Why, it can’t be possible! What sort of a looking man was it he bought him of, do you know?”

“A one-eyed Indian,” exclaimed Eugene, glancing through the door at Frank, whose face wore so comical a look of blank amazement that Eugene wanted to laugh outright. “Got him cheap, too—about ninety-five dollars.”

“It is very strange, and I can’t understand it,” said the young officer, whose surprise seemed to increase every moment. “To my certain knowledge, that Indian has been offered three hundred dollars for this horse, time and again.”

He came out to examine the animal, in order to make sure that he was not mistaken in him, and then went in again and held a whispered consultation with Frank; while Eugene once more made inquiries concerning his Uncle Dick, who, he knew perfectly well, was in camp enjoying his after-dinner smoke and nap. As he was about to ride away the lieutenant called to him again.

“I wish you would tell Archie that if he would like to dispose of that horse I’ll give him a good trade,” said he.

“I’ll tell him, but I don’t think he wants to sell. He needs a horse, and this one will perhaps suit him as well as any other.”

“I should like to have him for a curiosity,” added the lieutenant.

“That’s what Archie wants him for, I believe—or something else. If you can’t tell me where to find Uncle Dick, I guess I’ll go. Good-by.”

Eugene rode away from the lieutenant’s quarters demurely enough, but as soon as he was safe through the gate and out of hearing of Frank and the rest, he threw himself forward on the horn of his saddle and laughed so heartily that Fred and Archie, who were waiting for him behind an angle of the stockade, looked at him in amazement as he came up. Their faces brightened at once, for they knew he had good news to communicate.

“It is all right,” said Eugene, as soon as he could speak. “If you want to see a crest-fallen set of fellows, just go and call on the lieutenant. He says he’ll buy this horse if you want to sell him. He’d like to keep him for a curiosity.”

“O, he would, would he?” said Archie. “I know a story worth two of that. I don’t want to sell.”

“Of course you don’t. Now let’s go down to camp, and after Fred and I have saddled our horses, we’ll go out and have a gallop. I want to see this fellow move.”

The others readily agreed to this proposition. The numerous defeats they had sustained in their efforts to make Frank “take a back seat,” as they expressed it, had made them timid, and they wanted to know just what their new horse could do before they began boasting of his speed. The camp reached and the horses saddled, the three boys rode off and finally disappeared behind the swells.

The races that began as soon as they were out of sight of the camp and Fort continued for half an hour or more, each boy in turn riding the new horse; and the rapidity with which he moved over the ground when put to the top of his speed, and the ease with which he left the others behind, were enough to make the three friends dance with delight. They did not know that there were three persons who were watching their movements with a great deal of interest, but such was the fact. One of them was an Indian, who had thrown himself flat upon the summit of a neighboring swell, so that nothing but the top of his head could be seen above the grass, and the others were two horsemen who sat in their saddles in plain view of the racers. They were Frank and the lieutenant.

It was a great mystery to these two friends, not only how Archie had managed to possess himself of a horse which nearly every officer stationed at the Fort had tried in vain to purchase, but also how he had happened to hear of him. It was their intention to keep his existence a profound secret. It was a question in their minds, too, whether or not Archie knew what a prize he had secured; and in order to settle their doubts on this point, they mounted their horses and rode out to watch his movements.

“I am satisfied now,” said the lieutenant, when he and Frank had witnessed two of the three races that came off. “If Archie didn’t know that the horse was fast when he bought him, he certainly knows it by this time. It is all up with you, my boy.”

“I shouldn’t mind being beaten,” said Frank, “only I have crowed over Archie a good deal, and he will pay me back a thousand fold. No one can beat him at that.”

“There’s no way to avoid it, that I can see, unless you catch that wild horse of father’s. That would be a feather in your cap and money in your pocket. The race will take place to-morrow, I suppose.”

“I suppose so,” replied Frank.

But, as it happened, the race did not come off the next day, nor in fact on any day. An unlooked-for incident which happened that night saved Frank from defeat.

“Well, Archie,” said Eugene, at the conclusion of the third race, during which the new steed, which was plainly growing tired of the sport, took the bits in his teeth and made a persevering attempt to run away with Featherweight, who was riding him, “if you never had a good horse before you’ve got one now, and Mr. Nelson will have to take a back seat, sure.”

“But we don’t want to run him against the black to-day,” said Fred. “He’s getting tired. We don’t want to go back to camp either, for there’s nothing interesting going on there; so how shall we pass the afternoon?”

“I don’t know any better way than to follow up those antelopes again, if we can find them,” said Eugene. “Perhaps we may succeed in bagging one of them.”

This was the way the boys had passed a good portion of the week that had elapsed since the occurrence of the events at Potter’s rancho. Archie knew something about antelope, and the manner of hunting them practised by the hunters of the prairies, and he had been initiating his friends into the mysteries of the sport. We mean by this that he had showed them how to attract the attention and excite the curiosity of the timid animals, by moving above the grass a red handkerchief attached to the muzzle of a rifle; but he had not yet shown them how to shoot one, for the simple reason that the antelope, having been hunted and shot at by the officers and soldiers of the fort until their numbers had been pretty well thinned out, had become so wild and wary that Archie could never induce them to come within reach of his Maynard, which would have been sure death to one of them at six hundred yards. So in pursuit of the antelope the boys went; and the fact that during the whole of the afternoon they saw not the first sign of the game, did not dampen their ardor or detract from the pleasure of the brisk gallop they enjoyed. Neither would it in any way have marred their sport had they known that there was an eye watching all their movements; that it followed them in all their windings and turnings, and that when they rode into camp at dark, the owner of it was not more than two hundred yards behind them.

The Club’s camp was permanently located upon the banks of a small stream which ran through a thickly-wooded dell about a quarter of a mile from the Fort. When they first pitched upon that spot as a suitable camping-ground, they little thought that that stream was one of the famous trout brooks of which they had heard so much. It had more the appearance of the sluggish bayous so common in Louisiana. Its banks were low and marshy, the water was muddy and almost too warm to drink, the bed of the stream was filled with quicksands, in which a horse and his rider would sink out of sight, and taken altogether, one would as soon expect to find alligators and water-moccasins there as the speckled beauties in which anglers take so much delight. But the Club having explored the stream almost to its source, knew that its fountainhead was located among the hills about two days’ journey from the Fort; that for twenty miles the brook was one succession of foaming cascades; and that under every shelving rock along the banks was a deep and silent pool in which the trout fairly swarmed. The strings of fish they caught there were far ahead of anything Frank and Archie had ever drawn from the brooks about Lawrence, and two days’ splendid sport made no apparent diminution in their numbers. There seemed to be just as many left, and they were so eager to be taken that they would snap at a naked hook.

But the Club could not spend all their time in fishing, however much they enjoyed the sport. They expected to remain at the Fort not more than two weeks longer (Dick had warned them that the mountain passes would soon be blocked with snow, and that if they intended to return to California before the winter set in, they had but little time to spare), and there was still much to be seen. They scoured the prairie and foot-hills for miles on each side of the Fort; knocked over sage hens and jack rabbits by the dozen; chased a young grizzly bear that had strayed down from the mountains, and obtained one or two shots at elk and black-tails; but there were two species of animals that were occasionally seen about the Fort which they had not yet been able to find—buffalo and wild horses. The buffalo had been driven off the range by the hunters, who, in order to procure their hides, slaughtered them at all seasons of the year, and wild mustangs, Dick said, were not as often met with as in the years gone by. He had not seen any for a long time. True there was a small drove of horses which was now and then seen in the neighborhood of the Fort, but the animals comprising it were not mustangs. They were from the States, and it was supposed that they had either strayed away from some emigrant train, or been stampeded by the Indians. Among them was a small bay horse, with black points and a white star in his forehead, which had once belonged to Colonel Gaylord. He had escaped from the herders, joined this half-wild drove, and having gained his liberty seemed determined to keep it. He was a valuable animal, and it was understood that his owner was ready to pay a handsome reward to any one who would capture and return him.

It had by this time become pretty well known that Archie had traded for a new horse during the day, and the Club were talking about it when he rode into the camp. As he dismounted in front of the fire there was a general setting down of plates, and a simultaneous rush made by all the boys, who were as eager to examine the new horse as his owner was to exhibit him. They knew that the animal had been purchased on purpose to beat Frank’s horse, and they had a multitude of questions to ask about him.

“I suppose you two don’t care to see him, do you?”

This question was addressed by Eugene to Frank and Dick, who kept their seats by the fire, and devoted their whole attention to their suppers.

“I have seen him once before to-day,” said Frank.

“And what opinion have you formed regarding him?”

“I think he’s a very good-looking old hack.”

“O, do you?” exclaimed Archie. “It is very kind of you to say so much. But if you will take a ride with me to-morrow morning after breakfast, I’ll warrant you’ll think he is something besides an old hack before you see the last of him.”

Every one present understood that this was equivalent to a challenge, and Frank promptly accepted it as such, being resolved to “die game.”

“Now, Dick, let’s hear what you’ve got to say,” continued Eugene.

“I hope you didn’t give much for him,” was the trapper’s answer.

“Not much—a horse and about twenty dollars worth of blankets and things.”

“I’m sorry you gin that much.”

“Why? Isn’t he worth it?”

“I reckon he is.”

“Then why are you sorry?”

“O ’cause.”

“That’s no reason at all,” said Fred. “You’re sorry the black is going to get beaten, but we can’t help it. We don’t want to take dust all the time, and what’s more, we don’t intend to do it.”

Dick made no reply. He only smiled and glanced at old Bob, who gave him a significant look in return. Archie saw it, and knew that Dick had some other reason for wishing the trade had not been made. What it was he could not imagine. He thought of a score of things while he was unsaddling his horse and staking him out with the rest, but could decide upon nothing. When he returned to the fire a well-filled plate was placed before him, and in taking part in the conversation and listening to the trappers’ anecdotes, he soon forgot all about his new horse and the race that was to come off on the morrow.