The Wapiti 197 



stretched, his horns lying almost on his shoulders. 

 The favorite gait of the wapiti is the trot, which is 

 very fast, and which they can keep up for countless 

 miles; when suddenly and greatly alarmed, they 

 break into an awkward gallop, which is faster, but 

 which speedily tires them. 



I have occasionally killed elk in the neighborhood 

 of my ranch on the Little Missouri. They were 

 very plentiful along this river until 1881, but the 

 last of the big bands were slaughtered or scattered 

 about that time. Smaller bunches were found for 

 two or three years longer, and to this day, scattered 

 individuals, singly or in parties of two or three, lin- 

 ger here and there in the most remote and inacces- 

 sible parts of the broken country. In the old times 

 they were often found on the open prairie, and were 

 fond of sunning themselves on the sand bars by the 

 river, even at midday, while they often fed by day- 

 light (as they do still in remote mountain fast- 

 nesses). Nowadays the few survivors dwell in the 

 timber of the roughest ravines, and only venture 

 abroad at dusk or even after nightfall. Thanks 

 to their wariness and secluseness, their presence is 

 often not even suspected by the cowboys or others 

 who occasionally ride through their haunts; and so 

 the hunters only know vaguely of their existence. 

 It thus happens that the last individuals of a species 

 may linger in a locality for many years after the 

 rest of their kind have vanished ; on the Little Mis- 



