With Gun ^ Rod in Canada 



or canyon, to the edge of a mesa, made a lunch camp 

 beside a mountain torrent, hobbled the horses and 

 turned them out to feed. Packing up after lunch, we 

 crossed a most beautiful grassy park on top of this table- 

 land. It was a vast undulating sea of grass with clumps 

 of cedars here and there, like ships riding at anchor. 



Toward night David said we were in a fine deer 

 country, and should soon begin to see elk, and bear 

 tracks as well. We camped that night on the northern 

 edge of the mesa, and next morning travelled down a 

 short canyon partially wooded with quaking-asp and 

 cottonwoods. There was a good footing for the horses, 

 but no fresh tracks were in sight. By noon we were 

 making elevation again at every mile. We were in the 

 foothills of Baldy Mountain. Hardly half a mile from 

 our camp-fire the hoof-prints of a bunch of ponies 

 came into our trail, going also toward our objective. 

 David said they belonged to a bunch of Uintah Utes 

 going on a deer-hunt. He explained to me that the 

 Ute Indians made a sort of general holiday of their 

 hunting. All went on horseback spread out in a great 

 half-moon, sometimes stretching for a couple of miles, 

 with the object of driving deer or other game before 

 them into the mouth of some blind canyon, or draw. 

 In that way they could be more certain of getting them 

 than by individual hunting. Our chance of getting 

 any game short of the snow-line on Baldy Mountain 

 seemed pretty slim. As the tracks we were following 

 were hardly two days old, we would likely run into this 

 bunch of Indians sometime within twenty-four hours. 



About the middle of the next afternoon we came 

 up to their camp. I first saw it from the top of a little 

 knoll in the foothills, and it was in the distance a most 

 picturesque sight. There were perhaps a dozen wig- 

 wams pitched on the side of a " creek " (even a mountain 



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