254 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



slid down the other side and took off through a 

 streak of very rugged but low country. This day, 

 though the weather had grown even colder, we did 

 not feel it, for we walked all the while with a quick 

 pace, and the climbing was very hard work. The 

 shoulders and ledges of the cliffs had become round 

 and slippery with the ice, and it was no easy task 

 to move up and along them, clutching the gun in 

 one hand, and grasping each little projection with 

 the other. Climbing through the Bad Lands is just 

 like any other kind of mountaineering, except that 

 the precipices and chasms are much lower; but this 

 really makes very little difference when the ground 

 is frozen as solid as iron, for it would be almost as 

 unpleasant to fall fifty feet as to fall two hundred, 

 and the result to the person who tried it would be 

 very much the same in each case. 



Hunting for a day or two without finding game, 

 where the work is severe and toilsome, is a good test 

 of the sportsman s staying qualities; the man who 

 at the end of the time is proceeding with as much 

 caution and determination as at the beginning, has 

 got the right stuff in him. On this day I got rather 

 tired, and committed one of the blunders of which 

 no hunter ought ever to be guilty ; that is, I fired at 

 small game while on ground where I might expect 

 large. We had seen two or three jack-rabbits scud 

 ding off like noiseless white shadows, and finally 

 came upon some sharp-tail prairie fowl in a hollow. 

 One was quite near me, perched on a bush, and with 

 its neck stretched up offered a beautiful mark; I 



