Hunting the Prong-Buck 99 



site edge of the plateau ; but almost as soon as they 

 did so they were stopped by deep drifts of powdered 

 snow, and came back to the summit of the tableland. 

 They then circled round the edge at a gallop, and 

 finally broke madly by me, jostling one another in 

 their frantic haste, and crossed by a small ridge into 

 the next plateau beyond; as they went by I shot a 

 yearling. 



I now had all the venison I wished, and would 

 shoot no more, but I was curious to see how the an- 

 telope would act, and so walked after them. They 

 ran about half a mile, and then the whole herd, of 

 several hundred individuals, wheeled into line front- 

 ing me, like so many cavalry, and stood motionless, 

 the white and brown bands on their necks looking 

 like the facings on a uniform. As I walked near 

 they again broke and rushed to the end of the valley. 

 Evidently they feared to leave the flats for the broken 

 country beyond, where the rugged hills were riven 

 by gorges in some of which snow lay deep even thus 

 early in the season. Accordingly, after galloping a 

 couple of times round the valley, they once more 

 broke by me, at short range, and tore back along the 

 plateaus to that on which I had first found them. 

 Their evident and extreme reluctance to venture 

 into the broken country round about made me read- 

 ily understand the tales I had heard of game butch- 

 ers killing over a hundred individuals at a time out 

 of a herd so situated. 



