198 The Wilderness Hunter 



souri to-day every elk (as in the Rockies every buf- 

 falo) killed is at once set down as "the last of its 

 race." For several years in succession I myself 

 kept killing one or two such "last survivors." 



A yearling bull which I thus obtained was killed 

 while in company with my stanch friend Will Dow, 

 on one of the first trips which I took with that prince 

 of drivers, old man Tompkins. We were laying in 

 our stock of winter meat; and had taken the wagon 

 to go to a knot of high and very rugged hills where 

 we knew there were deer, and thought there might 

 be elk. Old Tompkins drove the wagon with un- 

 moved composure up, down, and across frightful- 

 looking hills, and when they became wholly impass- 

 able, steered the team over a cut bank and up a kind 

 of winding ravine or wooded washout, until it be- 

 came too rough and narrow for further progress. 

 There was good grass for the horses on a hill off 

 to one side of us; and stunted cottonwood trees 

 grew between the straight white walls of clay and 

 sandstone which hemmed in the washout. We 

 pitched our tent by a little trickling spring and 

 kindled a great fire, the fitful glare lighting the bare 

 cliffs and the queer, sprawling tops of the cotton- 

 woods; and after a dinner of fried prairie-chicken 

 went to bed. At dawn we were off, and hunted till 

 nearly noon ; when Dow, who had been walking to 

 one side, beckoned to me and remarked, "There's 

 something mighty big in the timber down under 



