132 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



very heavy, and after striking the Keogh trail, we 

 were able to go along it but a few miles before the 

 fagged-out look of the team and the approach of 

 evening warned us that we should have to go into 

 camp while still a dozen miles from any pool or 

 spring. Accordingly we made what would have 

 been a dry camp had it not been for the incessant 

 downpour of rain, which we gathered in the canvas 

 wagon-sheet and in our oilskin overcoats in suffi 

 cient quantity to make coffee, having with infinite 

 difficulty started a smouldering fire just to leeward 

 of the wagon. The horses, feeding on the soaked 

 grass, did not need water. An antelope, with the 

 bold and heedless curiosity sometimes shown by its 

 tribe, came up within two hundred yards of us as 

 we were building the fire ; but though one of us took 

 a shot at him, it missed. Our shaps and oilskins 

 had kept us perfectly dry, and as soon as our frugal 

 supper was over, we coiled up among the boxes 

 and bundles inside the wagon and slept soundly 

 till daybreak. 



When the sun rose next day, the third we were 

 out, the sky was clear, and we two horsemen at 

 once prepared to make a hunt. Some three 

 miles off to the south of where we were camped, 

 the plateau on which we were sloped off 

 into a great expanse of broken ground, with 

 chains upon chains of steep hills, separated by deep 

 valleys, winding and branching in every direction, 

 their bottoms filled with trees and brushwood. 

 Toward this place we rode, intending to go into it 



