140 



RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



antelope for that of the deer. Then our favorite quarry is the noble black- 

 tail, whose haunts are in the mountains and the high, craggy hills. We 

 kill him by fair still-hunting, and to follow him successfully through the 

 deep ravines and across the steep ridges of his upland home a man should 

 be sound in wind and limbs, and a good shot with the rifle as well. Many 

 a glorious fall morning I have passed in his pursuit'; often, moreover, I 

 have slain him in the fading evening as I walked homeward through the 

 still dim twilight for all wild game dearly love the gloaming. 



Once on a frosty evening I thus killed one when it was so dark that 

 my aim was little but guess-work. I was walking back to camp through 

 a winding valley, hemmed in by steep cedar-crowned walls of clay and 

 rock. All the landscape glimmered white with the new-fallen snow, and 

 in the west the sky was still red with the wintry sunset. Suddenly a 

 great buck came out of a grove of snow-laden cedars, and walked with 

 swift strides up to the point of a crag that overlooked the valley. There 

 he stood motionless while I crouched unseen in the shadow beneath. As 

 I fired he reared upright and then plunged over the cliff. He fell a hun- 

 dred feet before landing in the bushes, yet he did not gash or mar his 

 finely molded head and shapely, massive antlers. 



On one of the last days I hunted, in November, 1887, I killed two 

 black-tail, a doe and a buck, with one bullet. They were feeding in a glen 

 high up the side of some steep hills, and by a careful stalk over rough 

 ground I got within fifty yards. Peering over the brink of the cliff-like 

 slope up which I had clambered, I saw them standing in such a position 

 that the neck of the doe covered the buck's shoulder. The chance was 

 too tempting to be lost. My bullet broke the doe's neck, and of course 

 she fell where she was ; but the buck went off, my next two or three shots 

 missing him. However, we followed his bloody trail, through the high 

 pass he had crossed, down a steep slope, and roused him from the brush- 

 wood in a valley bottom. He soon halted and lay down again, making 

 off at a faltering gallop when approached, and the third time we came up 

 to him he was too weak to rise. He had splendid antlers. 



Sometimes we kill the deer by the aid of hounds. Of these we have 

 two at the ranch. One is a rough- coated, pure-blood Scotch stag- hound, 

 named Rob. The other, Brandy, is a track-hound, bell-mouthed, lop-eared, 

 keen-nosed, and not particularly fast, but stanch as Death himself. He 

 comes of the old Southern strain ; and, indeed, all the best blooded packs 

 of American deer-hounds or fox-hounds come from what was called the 

 Southern Hound in early seventeenth century England. Thus he is kin 

 to the hounds of Bellemeade, wherewith General Jackson follows the buck 



