Hunting the Prong-Buck 109 



water, night closed on me before I found any. For 

 two or three hours I stumbled on, leading my horse, 

 in my fruitless search; then a tumble over a cut 

 bank in the dark warned me that I might as well 

 stay where I was for the rest of the warm night. 

 Accordingly I unsaddled the horse, and tied him to 

 a sage brush ; after a while he began to feed on the 

 dewy grass. At first I was too thirsty to. sleep. 

 Finally I fell into slumber, and when I awoke at 

 dawn I felt no thirst. For an hour or two more I 

 continued my search for water in the creek bed; 

 then abandoned it and rode straight for the river. 

 By the time we reached it my thirst had come back 

 with redoubled force, my mouth was parched, and 

 the horse was in quite as bad a plight; we rushed 

 down to the brink, and it seemed as if we could 

 neither of us ever drink our fill of the tepid, rather 

 muddy water. Of course this experience was merely 

 unpleasant; thirst is. not a source of real danger 

 in the plains country proper, whereas in the hideous 

 deserts that extend from southern Idaho through 

 Utah and Nevada to Arizona, it ever menaces with 

 death the hunter and explorer. 



In the plains the weather is apt to be in extremes ; 

 the heat is tropical, the cold arctic, and the droughts 

 are relieved by furious floods. These are generally 

 most severe and lasting in the spring, after the melt- 

 ing of the snow; and fierce local freshets follow 

 the occasional cloudbursts. The large rivers then 



