THE RANCHMAN'S RIFLE ON CRAG AND PRAIRIE 



been lying and found in her bed another fawn, evidently but a few seconds 

 old. We left the two sprawling, unlicked little creatures where they were, 

 knowing that the mother would soon be back to care for them. 



Although sometimes we go out to the antelope ground and back in 

 one day, yet it is always more convenient to take the buckboard with us 

 and spend the night, camping by a water hole in one of the creeks. The 

 last time we took such a trip I got lost, and nearly spent the night in the 

 open. I had been riding with one of my cowboys, while another acted as 

 teamster and drove the buckboard and pair. We killed two antelope and 

 went into camp rather early. After taking dinner and picketing out the 

 four horses we found it still lacked an hour or two of sunset, and accord- 

 ingly my companions and I started out on foot, leaving our teamster in 

 camp, and paying no particular heed to our surroundings. We saw a herd 

 of prong-horn and wounded one, which we followed in vain until dusk, 

 and then started to go back to camp. Very soon we found that we had 

 quite a task before us, for in the dim starlight all the hollows looked 

 exactly alike, and the buttes seemed either to have changed form entirely 

 or else loomed up so vaguely through the darkness that we could not 

 place them in the least. We walked on and on until we knew that we 

 must be far past the creek, or coulee, where our camp lay, and then 

 turned towards the divide. The night had grown steadily darker, and 

 we could hear the far-off mutter and roll that told of an approaching 

 thunder-storm. Hour after hour we trudged wearily on, as fast as we 

 could go without stumbling, the gloom and the roughness of the unknown 

 ground proving serious drawbacks to our progress. When on the top 

 of a hillock, the blackness of the hollow beneath was so intense that we 

 could not tell whether we were going to walk down a slope or over a cliff, 

 and in consequence we met with one or two tumbles. At last we reached 

 the top of a tall butte that we knew must be on the divide. The night 

 was now as dark as pitch, and we were so entirely unable to tell where 

 we were that we decided to give up the quest in despair and try to 

 find some washout that would yield us at least partial shelter from the 

 approaching rain storm. We had fired off our rifles several times without 

 getting any response ; but now, as we took one last look around, we sud- 

 denly saw a flash of light, evidently from a gun, flare up through the 

 darkness so far off that no sound came to our ears. We trotted towards 

 it as fast as we could through the inky gloom, and when no longer sure 

 of our direction climbed a little hill, fired off our rifles, and after a min- 

 ute or two again sa\v the guiding flash. The next time we had occasion 

 to signal, the answering blaze was accompanied by a faint report ; and 



