100 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



broken country between the Little Missouri 

 and the Beaver. The cowboy drove the 

 wagon to a small spring, near some buttes 

 which are well distinguished by a number of 

 fossil tree-stumps ; while the rest of us, who 

 were mounted on good horses, made a circle 

 after antelope. We found none, and rode on 

 to camp, reaching it about the middle of the 

 afternoon. We had noticed several columns 

 of smoke in the southeast, showing that 

 prairie fires were under way ; but we thought 

 that they were too far off to endanger our 

 camp, and accordingly unsaddled our horses 

 and sat down to a dinner of bread, beans, and 

 coffee. Before we were through the smoke 

 began to pour over a ridge a mile distant in 

 such quantities that we ran thither with our 

 slickers, hoping to find some stretch of broken 

 ground where the grass was sparse, and where 

 we could fight the fire with effect. Our hopes 

 were vain. Before we reached the ridge the 

 fire came over its crest, and ran down in a 

 long tongue between two scoria buttes. Here 

 the grass was quite short and thin, and we 

 did our best to beat out the flames ; but they 

 gradually gained on us, and as they reached 

 the thicker grass lower down the slope, they 

 began to roar and dart forward in a way that 

 bade us pay heed to our own safety. Finally 

 they reached a winding line of brushwood in 

 the bottom of the coulie ; and as this burst 

 into a leaping blaze we saw it was high time 

 to look to the safety of our camp, and ran 

 back to it at top speed. Ferguson, who had 

 been foremost in fighting the fire, was already 

 scorched and blackened. 



