302 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



very hot; yet underneath the great archways of the 

 pine woods the air though still was cool, and the 

 sunbeams that struggled down here and there 

 through the interlacing branches, and glinted on 

 the rough trunks, only made bright spots in what 

 was elsewhere the uniform, grayish half-light of 

 the mountain forest. Game trails threaded the 

 woods in all directions, made for the most part by 

 the elk. These animals, when not disturbed, travel 

 strung out in single file, each one stepping very 

 nearly in the tracks of the one before it; they are 

 great wanderers, going over an immense amount 

 of country during the course of a day, and so they 

 soon wear regular, well-beaten paths in any place 

 where they are at all plentiful. 



The band I was following had, as is their cus 

 tom, all run together into a wedge-shaped mass 

 when I fired, and crashed off through the woods in 

 a bunch during the first moments of alarm. The 

 footprints in the soil showed that they had in the 

 beginning taken a plunging gallop, but after a few 

 strides had settled into the swinging, ground-cov 

 ering trot that is the elk s most natural and charac 

 teristic gait. A band of elk when alarmed is likely 

 to go twenty miles without halting; but these had 

 probably been very little molested, and there was a 

 chance that they would not go far without stopping. 

 After getting through the first grove, the huddled 

 herd had straightened itself out into single file, and 

 trotted off in a nearly straight line. A mile or two 

 of ground having been passed over in this way, the 



