64 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



sion of shallow pools strung along the broad 

 sandy bed which in spring-time was filled 

 from bank to bank with foaming muddy water. 

 Two mallards sat in one of these pools ; and 

 I hit one with the rifle, so nearly missing that 

 the ball scarcely ruffled a feather ; yet in some 

 way the shock told, for the bird after flying 

 thirty yards dropped on the sand. 



Then we left the river and our active ponies 

 scrambled up a small canyon-like break in the 

 bluffs. All day we rode among the hills ; 

 sometimes across rounded slopes, matted with 

 short buffalo grass ; sometimes over barren 

 buttes of red or white clay, where only sage 

 brush and cactus grew ; or beside deep 

 ravines, black with stunted cedar; or along 

 beautiful winding coulies, where the grass 

 grew rankly, and the thickets of ash and wild 

 plum made brilliant splashes of red and yellow 

 and tender green. Yet we saw nothing. 



As evening grew on we rode riverwards ; we 

 slid down the steep bluff walls, and loped across 

 a great bottom of sage brush and tall grass, 

 our horses now and then leaping like cats over 

 the trunks of dead cottonwoods. As we came 

 to the brink of the cut bank which forms the 

 hither boundary of the river in freshet time, 

 we suddenly saw two deer, a doe and a well 

 grown fawn of course long out of the spotted 

 coat. They were walking with heads down 

 along the edge of a sand-bar, near a pool, on 

 the farther side of the stream bed, over two 

 hundred yards distant. They saw us at once, 

 and turning, galloped away, with flags aloft, 

 the pictures of springing, vigorous beauty. I 

 jumped off my horse in an instant, knelt, and 



