WAPITI-RUNNING ON THE PLAINS 67 



glasses. At last I was rewarded. Quietly craning 

 my head over a sand-ridge, I saw lying at the bottom, 

 not more than a couple of hundred yards from me, 

 what looked at first like a great tangled mass of dry 

 white sticks. It turned out to be the heads of three 

 wapiti stags lying down close together. I man- 

 aged without much difficulty to get a little nearer 

 to them, left my horse, crawled up to the brow of 

 the nearest ridge, got a fine shot, and fired. I hate 

 taking a lying shot, and it would have been better 

 in this case if I had roused the animals up ; how- 

 ever, I fired at one as he lay, and struck him, but 

 not fatally, and they all got up and made off. 

 Noticing that one was wounded, I jumped on my 

 horse and followed him. I speedily came up to 

 him, for he was severely hit, dismounted, fired 

 another shot, and laid him on the sand. He was 

 not a very large stag, in fact he had a small head, 

 but I thought him the most magnificent animal 

 I had ever seen in my life. Fortunately for me, 

 Buffalo Bill, who heard the shots and saw the 

 wapiti making off, followed them and came to my 

 assistance, helped me to cut him up, and after 

 taking some meat on our saddles, brought me safely 

 and speedily back to the wagons. The river we 

 camped on is a good-sized stream. It flows through 



