CHAPTER V.
"NOW FOR THE RANCH." One of the singular features connected with the experience of our young friends during the first night they spent in Wyoming was that all the danger which threatened them came from one Indian and from one _lupus_.
After Jack Dudley had expelled the prowling buck, the intruder took good care to remain away.

Neither he nor any of his companions troubled the campers further.

The presumption, therefore, was that this solitary specimen was a "dog Indian," or vagrant, wandering over the country on his own account.

Such fellows, as already explained, claim no kinship with any tribe, but are, like the tramps of civilized society, agents for themselves alone.
Had the season been winter, with the snow deep on the ground, the trouble from the wolves would have been more serious.

Those gaunt creatures, when goaded by hunger, become exceedingly daring, and do not hesitate to attack even armed bodies of men; but it was autumn time, when the ravenous brutes, who seem always to be hungry, find the least difficulty in procuring food, and they remained true to their cowardly disposition and refrained from everything in the nature of true courage.
The curious fact, as we have remarked, was that, as in the case of the Indian, only a single wolf intruded upon the little company.