Hunting the Prong-Buck. 81 



stalked up a coulie to within a hundred yards of the near- 

 est band and killed a good buck. Instantly all the ante 

 lope in sight ran together into a thick mass and raced 

 away from me, until they went over the opposite 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 table-land. 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 antelope 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 fronting 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 re- 

 luctance to venture into the broken country round about 

 made me readily understand the tales I had heard of game 

 butchers killing over a hundred individuals at a time out 

 of a herd so situated. 



