364 The Wilderness Hunter. 



it, and usually in helping- to finish it at the worry. With 

 such packs I have had many a wildly exciting ride over 

 the great grassy plains lying near the Little Missouri and 

 the Knife and Heart rivers. Usually our proceedings on 

 such a hunt were perfectly simple. We started on horse- 

 back and when reaching favorable ground beat across it 

 in a long scattered line of men and dogs. Anything that 

 we put up, from a fox to a coyote or a prong-buck, was 

 fair game, and was instantly followed at full speed. The 

 animals we most frequently killed were jack-rabbits. They 

 always gave good runs, though like other game they dif- 

 fered much individually in speed. The foxes did not run 

 so well, and whether they were the little swift, or the big 

 red prairie fox, they were speedily snapped up if the dogs 

 had a fair showing. Once our dogs roused a blacktail 

 buck close up out of a brush coulie where the ground was 

 moderately smooth, and after a headlong chase of a mile 

 they ran into him, threw him, and killed him before he 

 could rise. (His stiff-legged bounds sent him along at a 

 tremendous pace at first, but he seemed to tire rather 

 easily.) On two or three occasions we killed whitetail 

 deer, and several times antelope. Usually, however, the 

 antelopes escaped. The bucks sometimes made a good 

 fight, but generally they were seized while running, some 

 dogs catching by the throat, others by the shoulders, and 

 others again by the flank just in front of the hind-leg. 

 Wherever the hold was obtained, if the dog made his 

 spring cleverly, the buck was sure to come down with a 

 crash, and if the other dogs were anywhere near he was 

 probably killed before he could rise, although not infre- 



