The Whitetail Deer. 43 



kinds of game must be taken into account. Of course 

 the larger kinds, such as elk and moose, are the easiest to 

 hit ; then coines the antelope, in spite of its swiftness, and 

 the sheep, because of the evenness of their running ; then 

 the whitetail, with its rolling gallop ; and last and hardest 

 of all, the blacktail, because of its extraordinary stiff- 

 legged bounds. 



Sometimes on a runway the difficulty is not that the 

 game is too far, but that it is too close ; for a deer may 

 actually almost jump on the hunter, surprising him out of 

 all accuracy of aim. Once something of the sort happened 

 to me. 



Winter was iust beginning. I had been off with the 

 ranch wagon on a last round-up of the beef steers ; and 

 had suffered a good deal, as one always does on these 

 cold weather round-ups, sleeping out in the snow, wrapped 

 up in blankets and tarpaulin, with no tent and generally 

 no fire. Moreover, I became so weary of the intermi- 

 nable length of the nights, that I almost ceased to mind 

 the freezing misery of standing night guard round the 

 restless cattle ; while roping, saddling, and mastering the 

 rough horses each morning, with numbed and stiffened 

 limbs, though warming to the blood was harrowing to 

 the temper. 



On my return to the ranch I found a strange hunter 

 staying there ; a clean, square-built, honest-looking little 

 fellow, but evidently not a native American. As a rule, 

 nobody displays much curiosity about any one's else ante- 

 cedents in the Far West ; but I happened to ask my fore- 

 man who the new-comer was, chiefly because the said 



