Blacktails in the Bad Lands 



One bright, cold November day I started 

 from a ranch on the Little Missouri, in west- 

 ern Dakota, with the set purpose of getting 

 venison for the ever hungry cow-boys. They 

 depended solely upon me for their supply of 

 fresh meat; and as for some time I had shot 

 nothing, I had been the subject of disparag- 

 ing comment for several days, and the fore- 

 man, in particular, suggested that I should 

 stay at home and kill a steer, and not chase 

 all the blacktails into the next county. 



So I stole off this time with an almost 

 guilty conscience, and plunged at once into 

 the dense brush of the river-bottom. In the 

 thicket I startled a Virginia deer, but knew it 

 to be one only by the waving salute of its 

 white flag. I also passed a tree in one of the 

 forks of which I had, at another time, found 

 an old muzzle-loading rifle, rusted, worn, and 

 decaying, a whole history in itself, and be- 

 yond, not two hundred yards away, an In- 



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