92 HUNTING TRIPS 



snow. On tracing them back we found that 

 it had been lying down on the other side of a 

 small bluff, within a hundred yards of where 

 we had passed, and must have either got our 

 wind, or else have heard us make some noise. 

 At any rate it had gone off, and though we 

 followed its tracks a little in the snow, they 

 soon got on the bare, frozen ground and we 

 lost them. 



After that we saw nothing. The cold, as 

 the day wore on, seemed gradually to chill 

 us through and through ; our hands and feet 

 became numb, and our ears tingled under our 

 fur caps. We hunted carefully through two 

 or three masses of jagged buttes which 

 seemed most likely places for the game we 

 were after, taking a couple of hours to each 

 place ; and then, as the afternoon was begin- 

 ning to wane, mounted our shivering horses 

 for good, and pushed toward the bend of the 

 river where we were to meet the buck-board. 

 Our course lay across a succession of bleak, 

 wind-swept plateaus, broken by deep and 

 narrow pine-clad gorges. We galloped 



