Mule-deer 141 



than one man as a thing which none had ever seen before — 

 which I alone had witnessed and discovered. But following 

 the wonder and pleasure of the discovery came a disappoint- 

 ment — this graceful flight, these light-foot bounds, are not so 

 speedy as they seem and not so easy as they look, are frightfully 

 laborious indeed. By slow degrees the conviction came that 

 the Blacktail, winged as it seems, cannot run with the Whitetail. 

 It has not the speed; it has not the endurance; the bounding 

 is a thing of grace and beauty, but no more — the low running of 

 the Eastern Deer is a better gait. So it seemed, so I believed 

 it, as though this were not a contradiction, impossible in nature. 

 This much is sure, that for all such strange things there is a 

 most excellent reason and it is always rewarding to seek it out. 

 Why, then, these mighty, futile bounds ? Thirteen years 

 later I learned. Riding the Little Missouri hills, in 1897, with 

 a company of wolf-hunters and followed by a pack of diverse 

 dogs — trailing dogs, fighting dogs, and greyhounds, fleetest 

 of their race to overtake the flying foe, we came by chance on a 

 prey we sought not — a Blacktail mother with her twins. 

 Great-eyed, great-eared, they stood at gaze, all three. We 

 tried to turn our pack aside, but the greyhounds sighted game, 

 and off like arrows shot they went, and the Blacktail turned 

 for flight. We did our best to call the hounds away, but who 

 can turn a greyhound from a foe that runs ? Away they sped 

 and the Blacktail sped away. How the memories of my youth 

 came back as I watched them bounding along the level bottom- 

 lands, bounding — bounding — oh, it was beautiful, it was 

 glorious, but it was sad! For, notwithstanding all their won- 

 drous powers, their winged heels, they were losing time. The 

 greyhounds, far behind at first, were low skimming like prairie 

 hawks, were making three yards to the Blacktail's two, were 

 gaining, went faster yet, were winning, would surely win. In 

 vain we tried to ride ahead to cut them ofi^, to turn or call 

 them back; their speed, their mad impetuosity, grew only 

 faster and fiercer. In spite of every efl^ort, we knew that in a 

 few minutes we should see three defenceless Blacktail mangled 

 by our hounds. 



