Hg RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



shortly afterward, as the cold grew more and more biting, we rolled in 

 under our furs and blankets and were soon asleep. 



In the morning it was evident that instead of thawing it had grown 

 decidedly colder. The anchor ice was running thick in the river, and we 

 spent the first hour or two after sunrise in hunting over the frozen swamp 

 bottom for white-tail deer, of which there were many tracks ; but we saw 

 nothing. Then we broke camp and again started down-stream a simple 

 operation, as we had no tent, and all we had to do was to cord up our 

 bedding and gather the mess kit. It was colder than before, and for 

 some time we went along in chilly silence, nor was it until midday that the 

 sun warmed our blood in the least. The crooked bed of the current 

 twisted hither and thither, but whichever way it went the icy north wind, 

 blowing stronger all the time, drew steadily up it. One of us remarking 

 that we bade fair to have it in our faces all day, the steersman announced 

 that we could n't, unless it was the crookedest wind in Dakota ; and half 

 an hour afterward we overheard him muttering to himself that it was the 

 crookedest wind in Dakota. We passed a group of tepees on one bottom, 

 marking the deserted winter camp of some Grosventre Indians, which 

 some of my men had visited a few months previously on a trading expe- 

 dition. It was almost the last point on the river with which we were 

 acquainted. At midday we landed on a sand-bar for lunch a simple 

 enough meal, the tea being boiled over a fire of driftwood, that also fried 

 the bacon, while the bread only needed to be baked every other day. 

 Then we again shoved off. As the afternoon waned the cold grew still 

 more bitter, and the wind increased, blowing in fitful gusts against us, 

 until it chilled us to the marrow when we sat still. But we rarely did sit 

 still ; for even the rapid current was unable to urge the light-draught 

 scow down in the teeth of the strong blasts, and we only got her along by 

 dint of hard work with pole and paddle. Long before the sun went down 

 the ice had begun to freeze on the handles of the poles, and we were not 

 sorry to haul on shore for the night. For supper we again had prairie 

 fowl, having shot four from a great patch of bulberry bushes late in the 

 afternoon. A man doing hard open-air work in cold weather is always 

 hungry for meat. 



During the night the thermometer went down to zero, and in the 

 morning the anchor ice was running so thickly that we did not care to 

 start at once, for it is most difficult to handle a boat in the deep frozen 

 slush. Accordingly we took a couple of hours for a deer hunt, as there 

 were evidently many white-tail on the bottom. We selected one long, 

 isolated patch of tangled trees and brushwood, two of us beating through 



