INTER-OCEAN HUNTING TALES 



or disturbed the habitations of a lot of small 

 fry under a rotten log, furnished evidence of 

 his presence. There was enough large game 

 in the country to give some idea of what it had 

 been at a time when the Redskin was the 

 undisputed proprietor of the soil. 



I had secured, through correspondence, the 

 services of a guide who had been well recom- 

 mended. Having heard considerably about 

 the cowboy, my curiosity had been somewhat 

 excited, and I desired to form a better ac- 

 quaintance from actual experience. The West 

 was then, to my mind, a geographical 

 area possessing a certain wildness and wooli- 

 ness, which my imagination pictured to me. 

 The rapid trend of events makes a book 

 describing its general conditions seem behind 

 the times almost as soon as it is published. 

 Much of what I had read and heard, how- 

 ever, seemed to me like a fairy tale in the face 

 of actual experience, although, allowing for 

 exaggeration, back of it all it had a founda- 



