The Last of the Plainsmen 



so plainly that, with delight on delight, I counted 

 seventeen deer pass through an open arch of dark 

 green. Rising to my feet, I ran to get round a low 

 mound. They saw me and bounded away with 

 prodigiously long leaps. Bringing their forefeet 

 together, stiff-legged under them, they bounced high, 

 like rubber balls, yet they were graceful. 



The forest was so open that I could watch them 

 for a long way; and as I circled with my gaze, a 

 glimpse of something white arrested my attention. 

 A light, grayish animal appeared to be tearing at 

 an old stump. Upon nearer view, I recognized a 

 wolf, and he scented or sighted me at the same 

 moment, and loped off into the shadows of the trees. 

 Approaching the spot where I had marked him I 

 found he had been feeding from the carcass of a 

 horse. The remains had been only partly eaten, and 

 were of an animal of the mustang build that had 

 evidently been recently killed. Frightful lacerations 

 under the throat showed where a lion had taken fatal 

 hold. Deep furrows in the ground proved how the 

 mustang had sunk his hoofs, reared and shaken him 

 self. I traced roughly defined tracks fifty paces to 

 the lee of a little bank, from which I concluded the 

 lion had sprung. 

 T gave free rein to my imagination and saw the 



forest dark, silent, peopled by none but its savage 



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