252 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



which seemed most likely places for the game we 

 were after, taking a couple of hours to each place; 

 and then, as the afternoon was beginning to wane, 

 mounted our shivering horses for good, and pushed 

 toward the bend of the river where we were to meet 

 the buckboard. Our course lay across a succession 

 of bleak, wind-swept plateaus, broken by deep and 

 narrow pine-clad gorges. We galloped swiftly over 

 the plateaus, where the footing was good and the 

 going easy, for the gales had driven the feathery 

 snow off the withered brown grass; but getting on 

 and off these table-lands was often a real labor, their 

 sides were so sheer. The horses plunged and 

 scrambled after us as we led them up; while in 

 descending they would sit back on their haunches 

 and half-walk, half-slide, down the steep inclines. 

 Indeed, one or two of the latter were so very 

 straight that the horses would not face them, 

 and we had to turn them round and back them 

 over the edge, and then let all go down with a 

 rush. At any rate it warmed our blood to keep out 

 of the way of the hoofs. On one of the plateaus 

 I got a very long shot at a black-tail, which I missed. 

 Finally we struck the head of a long, winding 

 valley with a smooth bottom, and after cantering 

 down it four or five miles, came to the river, just 

 after the cold, pale-red sun had sunk behind the 

 line of hills ahead of us. Our horses were sharp 

 shod, and crossed the ice without difficulty ; and in a 

 grove of leafless cottonwoods on the opposite 

 side, we found the hut for which we had been mak- 



