TWENTY YEARS IN THE ROCKIES. 177 



a rifle-shot broke in upon my meditations, and a deer came 

 down the creek with the speed of an arrow. I imitated the 

 cry of a deer,, and fired when he paused. He was never to 

 race over the hills again, and floundered out into the creek, 

 but I took him by the horns, brought him to shore, and, in 

 a very few minutes, he was hanging in quarters on the 

 limbs of a tree. When I got to camp, I found that my deer 

 was the only game killed that day, so we soon brought it in, 

 and had a good supper. 



The usual number of stories, wild and improbable, were 

 told that night around the camp-fire. Every hunter who 

 has been out with a number of others, knows what a pleas- 

 ant pastime story-telling is after a hard day's march, and 

 how often it is kept up for the greater part of the night. 

 When we started out the next day, we adopted our plan of 

 the day before, each taking a different route. I went far up 

 the stream, and half-way up the mountain-side, where I 

 found myself in a nice little park. In the farther end was a 

 large five-pronged buck, waiting for a ball from my rifle. 

 I raised the sights to three hundred yards, took careful aim 

 at his breast, and let fly. He sprang into the air, switched 

 his tail, bucked like a broncho and went off like a shot, tear- 

 ing away the bushes that lay in his path. I stepped off the 

 distance from where I had stood to where he had been 

 and I found that I had miscalculated the distance, as it was 

 four hundred yards. The blood that he had shed was of a 

 light red color, proving the wound to be trifling. I followed 

 him for about a mile along the mountainside, missed the 

 trail, gave him up for lost, and started for camp. On the 

 way I met one of the boys, also returning, with his half- 

 breed shepherd and wolfdog, Captain Jinks. 



We walked leisurely along, chatting together, taking 

 no particular notice of anything, until the movements of the 



