TWENTY YEARS IN THE ROCKIES. 277 



the place where the buck had disappeared. This animal was 

 soon found, and Cal was speechless with gratification at the 

 turn in our fortune. 



He insisted that the other one had gotten away down 

 the rimrock, but I was confident that I had brought him also 

 to earth. As it was dark, and our horses were heavily loaded, 

 we concluded to wait until morning before we searched for 

 him. After two hours of hard travel over logs and through 

 bushes and trees, we could see the bright campfire blazing up 

 among the tall pines, and a thrill of joy crept over us as we 

 neared its warmth. We closely surveyed the camp from a 

 distance, to see if any game adorned it. None was in sight, 

 so we rode proudly in to receive the congratulations of our 

 comrades and started our first venison cooking of this trip. 

 Soon the gentle zephyr was scented with the aroma of the 

 juicy meat, and we all had a splendid supper of liver, steak, 

 hot biscuits, fried onions and roasted potatoes, with an abun- 

 dance of good coffee. 



We cut away some limbs and hung our deer as high as 

 we could reach, but their heads and shoulders rested on the 

 ground. Cal said that we would get all the game we wanted 

 now as we had a start. We all retired late to rest, but were 

 tip early to go after the other deer and to look for the others 

 we expected to kill. In the old snow we found bear tracks, 

 and those of a mountain lion also, but, as the snow was al- 

 most gone,, we could not track them far, and were compelled 

 to leave this game until another snow should fall. When we 

 reached the scene of the encounter of the night previous, a 

 myriad of magpies were devouring our deer. We went to the 

 one we killed the night before, found the birds were eating 

 its insides, so we cut some pine boughs and filled the deer's 

 tody with them to prevent the birds from getting into it. 



I now started to look for some signs of my other deer. 



