242 HUNTING TRIPS 



in their beds, which are sometimes in the 

 brush and among the matted bushes in the 

 bottoms of the small branching coulies, or 

 heads of the crooked ravines. More often 

 they will be found in the thickets of stunted 

 cedars clothing the brinks of the canyons or 

 the precipitous slopes of the great chasms 

 into which the ground is cleft and rent; or 

 else among the groves of gnarled pines on 

 the sides of the buttes, and in the basins 

 and pockets between the spurs. If the coun- 

 try is not much hunted over, a buck or old 

 doe will often take its mid-day rest out in the 

 open, lying down among the long grass or 

 shrubbery on one of the bare benches at the 

 head of a ravine, at the edge of the dense 

 brush with which its bottom and sides are 

 covered. In such a case, a position is al- 

 ways chosen from which a look-out can be 

 kept all around ; and the moment any sus- 

 picious object is seen, the deer slips off into 

 the thicket below him. Perhaps the favor- 

 ite resting-places are the rounded edges of 

 the gorges, just before the sides of the lat- 



