312 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



and made furrows in the sooty mud that covered my 

 face, from having fallen full length down on the 

 burned earth; I sobbed for breath as I toiled at 

 a shambling trot after them, as nearly done out as 

 could well be. At this moment they turned down- 

 hill. It was a great relief; a man who is too done 

 up to go a steep up-hill can still run fast enough 

 down; with a last spurt I closed in near enough to 

 fire again ; one elk fell ; the other went off at a walk. 

 We passed the second elk and I kept on alone after 

 the third, not able to go at more than a slow trot 

 myself, and too much winded to dare risk a shot at 

 any distance. He got out of the burned patch, 

 going into some thick timber in a deep ravine; I 

 closed pretty well, and rushed after him into a 

 thicket of young evergreens. Hardly was I in when 

 there was a scramble and bounce among them and I 

 caught a glimpse of a yellow body moving out to one 

 side ; I ran out toward the edge and fired through the 

 twigs at the moving beast. Down it went, but when 

 I ran up, to my disgust I found that I had jumped 

 and killed, in my haste, a black-tail deer, which 

 must have been already roused by the passage of 

 the wounded elk. I at once took up the trail of the 

 latter again, but after a little while the blood grew 

 less, and ceased, and I lost the track; nor could 

 I find it, hunt as hard as I might. The poor beast 

 could not have gone five hundred yards; yet we 

 never found the carcass. 



Then I walked slowly back past the deer I had 

 slain by so curious a mischance, to the elk. The 



