120 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN, 



of the prairie. It may be that the big rams 

 retire to the more remote ranges, to which even 

 the Indians do not know the way, or to which, 

 if they do, they will not guide a stranger ; but 

 for the most part, where disturbed, I think the 

 rams hide in the timber or in the precipitous 

 canons below the feeding-grounds. Here it is a 

 hopeless task to seek them, and a mere fluke if 

 you succeed in finding them. My Scotch friends 

 had gone the day after the drive, and I lay at 

 my pony's feet with my boy Toma looking across 

 the sea of peaks, with which we were almost on 

 a level. I never met the man yet who was so 

 good a fellow that I would not rather have his 

 room than his company in a shooting-camp. At 

 any rate, if two are company, more than two are 

 too many. I confess this is an unlovely trait in 

 my character, but it is there ; and as I looked over 

 the waves of purple peaks, crowned with masses 

 of ragged black cloud, and lit here and there by 

 a ray of autumn sunlight, I sighed for solitude. 

 As I looked, the sun touched a great rounded 

 shoulder of the mountain far away at the back 

 of the first range beyond the river, a shoulder bare 

 of pine woods, far above the timber, and in the 

 sunlight looking smooth and golden with rich dry 

 grasses. 



' Toma, do you see that peak, beyond where 



