HUNTING FROM THE RANCH, 41 



We started up a winding coulie which opened 

 back of the ranch house ; and after half an 

 hour's canter clambered up the steep head- 

 ravines, and emerged on a high ridge which 

 went westward, straight as an arrow, to the 

 main divide between the Little Missouri and 

 the Big Beaver. Along this narrow, grassy 

 crest we loped and galloped ; we were so high 

 that we could look far and wide over all the 

 country round about. To the southward, 

 across a dozen leagues of rolling and broken 

 prairie, loomed Sentinel Butte, the chief land- 

 mark of all that region. Behind us, beyond 

 the river, rose the weird chaos of Bad Lands 

 which at this point lie for many miles east of 

 the Little Missouri. Their fantastic outlines 

 were marked against the sky as sharply as if 

 cut with a knife ; their grim and forbidding 

 desolation warmed into wonderful beauty by 

 the light of the dying sun. On our right, as 

 we loped onwards, the land sunk away in 

 smooth green-clad slopes and valleys ; on our 

 left it fell in sheer walls. Ahead of us the sun 

 was sinking behind a mass of blood-red clouds ; 

 and on either hand the flushed skies were 

 changing their tint to a hundred hues of opal 

 and amethyst. Our tireless little horses sprang 

 under us, thrilling with life ; we were riding 

 through a fairy world of beauty and color and 

 limitless space and freedom. 



Suddenly a short hundred yards in front 

 three blacktail leaped out of a little glen and 

 crossed our path, with the peculiar bounding 

 gait of their kind. At once I sprang from my 

 horse and, kneeling, fired at the last and larg- 

 est of the three. My bullet sped too far back, 



