[Illustration:  Effect of a Dog on a Mexican]

“Do you s’pose Smith’s at home?”

“Oh, I guess so,” answered Ollie.

“I’d like to see him,” went on the man, with an uneasy air.

“Probably you’ll find him eating breakfast,” said Ollie.

“I don’t like to go in,” said the man.  “Why not?”

“I’m—­I’m afraid of the dog.”

“Oh!” replied Ollie.  “Well, I’m not.  Come on,” and he stalked ahead very bravely, while the man followed cautiously behind.

“He’s a Mexican,” said Smith in explanation afterwards.  “All Mexicans are afraid of dogs.”

“That’s a pretty broad statement,” said Jack, after Smith had gone.  “I believe, if there was a good reward offered, that I could find a Mexican who isn’t afraid of dogs.  Though perhaps it’s the hair they’re afraid of; Mexican dogs don’t have any, you know.”

“Don’t any of them have hair?” asked Ollie.

“Not a hair,” answered his truthful uncle.  “I don’t suppose a Mexican dog would know a hair if he saw it.”

“I think that’s a bigger story than Smith’s,” said Ollie.

It was Sunday, and we spent most of the day in the wagon, though we took a long walk up the valley in the afternoon.  The first thing Ollie said the next morning was, “When are we going to see the buffaloes?”

Smith had been telling us about them the evening before.  They were down-town, and belonged to a Dr. McGillicuddie.  They had been brought in recently from the Rosebud Indian Agency, and had been captured some time before in the Bad Lands.

We followed the trail, now as deep with mud as it had been with dust, meeting many freighters on the way, and found the buffaloes near the Deadwood stage barn.

“See!” exclaimed Ollie; “there they are, in the yard.”

“Don’t say ‘yard,’” returned Jack; “say ‘corral,’ with a good, strong accent on the last syllable.  A yard is a corral, and a farm a ranch, and a revolver a six-shooter—­and a lot more.  Don’t be green, Oliver.”

“Oh, bother!” replied Ollie.  “There’s ten of ’em.  See the big fellow!”

“They’re nice ones, that’s so,” answered Jack.  “I’d like to see the Yankton man we heard about try to milk that cow over in the corner.”

[Illustration:  Post-Mortem on a Grizzly]

After we had seen the buffaloes we wandered about town and jingled our spurs, which were quite in the fashion.  We encountered a big crowd in front of one of the markets, and found that a hunter had just come in from the mountains to the west with the carcass of the biggest bear ever brought into Rapid City.  Some said it was a grizzly, and others a silvertip, and one man tried to settle the difficulty by saying that there wasn’t any difference between them.  But it was certainly a big bear, and filled the whole wagon-box.  Ollie sidled through the crowd and asked so many questions of the man, who was named Reynolds, that he good-naturedly gave Ollie one of the largest of the claws.  It was five inches long.