Blacktails in the Bad Lands 
One bright, cold November day I started 
from a ranch on the Little Missouri, in west- 
ern Dakota, with the set purpose of getting 
venison for the ever hungry cow-boys. They 
depended solely upon me for their supply of 
fresh meat; and as for some time I had shot 
nothing, I had been the subject of disparag- 
ing comment for several days, and the fore- 
man, in particular, suggested that I should 
stay at home and kill a steer, and not chase 
all the blacktails into the next county. 
So I stole off this time with an almost 
guilty conscience, and plunged at once into 
the dense brush of the river-bottom. In the 
thicket I startled a Virginia deer, but knew it 
to be one only by the waving salute of its 
white flag. I also passed a tree in one of the 
forks of which I had, at another time, found 
an old muzzle-loading rifle, rusted, worn, and 
decaying, a whole history in itself, and be- 
yond, not two hundred yards away, an In- 
287 
