Still-Hunting Elk. 2 95 



direction of the probable haunts of the doomed deer. 

 Towards nightfall we struck a deep spring pool, near 

 by the remains of an old Indian encampment. It was 

 at the head of a great basin, several miles across, in 

 which we believed the game to lie. The wagon was 

 halted and we pitched camp ; there was plenty of dead 

 wood, and soon the venison steaks were broiling over 

 the coals raked from beneath the crackling cottonwood 

 logs, while in the narrow valley the ponies grazed almost 

 within the circle of the flickering fire-light. It was in 

 the cool and pleasant month of September ; and long 

 after going to bed we lay awake under the blankets 

 watching the stars that on clear nights always shine 

 with such intense brightness over the lonely Western 

 plains. 



We were up and off by the gray of the morning. It 

 was a beautiful hunting day ; the sundogs hung in the 

 red dawn ; the wind hardly stirred over the crisp grass ; 

 and though the sky was cloudless yet the weather had 

 that queer, smoky, hazy look that it is most apt to take 

 on during the time of the Indian summer. From a high 

 spur of the table-land we looked out far and wide over 

 a great stretch of broken country, the brown of whose 

 hills and valleys was varied everywhere by patches of 

 dull red and vivid yellow, tokens that the trees were 

 already putting on the dress with which they greet the 

 mortal ripening of the year. The deep and narrow but 

 smooth ravines running up towards the edges of the 

 plateaus were heavily wooded, the bright green tree-tops 

 rising to a height they rarely reach in the barren plains- 



