Still-Hunting Elk. 2 77 



We went in with the pack train two days' journey 

 before pitching camp in what we intended to be our 

 hunting grounds, following an old Indian trail. No one 

 who has not tried it can understand the work and worry that 

 it is to drive a pack train over rough ground and through 

 timber. We were none of us very skilful at packing, and 

 the loads were all the time slipping ; sometimes the ponies 

 would stampede with the pack half tied, or they would 

 get caught among the fallen logs, or in a ticklish place 

 would suddenly decline to follow the trail, or would com- 

 mit some one of the thousand other tricks which seem to 

 be all a pack-pony knows. Then at night they were a 

 bother ; if picketed out they fed badly and got thin, and 

 if they were not picketed they sometimes strayed away. 

 The most valuable one of the lot was also the hardest to 

 catch. Accordingly we used to let him loose with a long 

 lariat tied round his neck, and one night this lariat twisted 

 up in a sage-brush, and in struggling to free himself the 

 pony got a half hitch round h;s hind leg, threw himself, 

 and fell over a bank into a creek on a large stone. We 

 found him in the morning very much the worse for wear, 

 and his hind legs swelled up so that his chief method of 

 progression was by a series of awkward hops. Of course 

 no load could be put upon him, but he managed to limp 

 along behind the other horses, and actually in the end 

 reached the ranch on the Little Missouri three hundred 

 miles off. No sooner had he got there and been turned 

 loose to rest than he fell down a big wash-out and broke 

 his neck. Another time one of the mares a homely beast 

 with a head like a camel's managed to flounder into the 



