194 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

 Hunting Stories and Habits of Wild Animals Concluded. 



It was the first week in September 1873 that we were 

 in camp on Elm creek in Valley county, just at the north 

 side of the valley of the North Loup river, and about three 

 miles northeast of the place where the city of Ord now 

 stands. At that early date, however, there was no Ord, and 

 the settlements of Valley county were confined chiefly to 

 the immediate valley of the North Loup river, although there 

 were three or four settlers located in the valley of the Middle 

 Loup, near the present site of Arcadia, and two or three on 

 Myra creek, just west of the present site of North Loup 

 village. In fact, at that date, Valley, Greeley and Sherman 

 counties were only just beginning to settle up, and that only 

 in the valleys of the larger streams. The great mass of the 

 territory of these counties just mentioned, together with all 

 of Custer county, was as yet as primitive a wilderness as it 

 was when Lewis and Clark made their memorable journey 

 of exploration up the Missouri river, and across the conti- 

 nent to Oregon in 1804-6. 



At that time the counties of Wheeler, Greeley, Valley, 

 Sherman, Custer, Loup and Blaine were alive with big 

 game elk, white tail deer, black tail deer and antelope. I 

 hunted in all the counties named above more or less from 

 1871 to 1880, and I have never seen anywhere a better game 

 country. Game of all the kinds just mentioned was also 

 abundant in Boone, Antelope, Holt and Howard counties, 

 but not so very plentiful as in the counties first named. The 

 antelope held to the level and undulating tracts of high land, 

 and to the smooth wide bottoms of the large streams, where 

 they could both see and be seen, but they avoided the ex- 



