THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 23 



Not so my companion, dear old optimist that he 

 was. "He's yours all right! We'll have him yet!" 

 he kept repeating. The little dimpling tracks and 

 scarlet specks had ceased, so turning our horses we 

 rode back. Then, joy of joys ! Yarnall, who was 

 in front, cried suddenly, " Here he is dead ! " and 

 flung himself off his pony. There he was indeed, 

 stone dead and his head a beauty. A trifle over a 

 foot in length, his beautiful black rough horns had 

 brought unwelcome attentions on him from others 

 besides myself; though I for the nonce was the one 

 favoured by the gods. A deep flesh wound gaped 

 in his flank, whilst a bullet from some small-bore 

 had cut its way through one foreleg and badly 

 torn the other. My shot had broken him all to 

 pieces internally, and his vitality must have been 

 enormous to have carried him the three hundred 

 yards which he had covered before dropping. 



Of all my sport in Wyoming, that is the day 

 which recurs most often to my mind. I think of 

 my big buck as I first saw him, and of how we 

 came on him over that little knoll ; of the other 

 smaller antelope which I got an hour or so later ; 

 of our ride home in the blaze of the noonday sun, 

 our saddles strung with heads, haunches, rifles ; of 

 my old White Knight and his tales, and I wonder 

 when I shall have another like it. 



The pronghorn, like nearly every other species 

 of wild game, is growing scarcer with the advancing 

 years. Not so long ago their numbers rivalled those 



