ON THE PRAIRIE 169 



and glinted on the rough trunks, only made 

 bright spots in what was elsewhere the uni- 

 form, grayish half-light of the mountain 

 forest. Game trails threaded the woods in 

 all directions, made for the most part by the 

 elk. These animals, when not disturbed, 

 travel strung out in single file, each one 

 stepping very nearly in the tracks of the 

 one before it; they are great wanderers, 

 going over an immense amount of coun- 

 try during the course of a day, and so 

 they soon wear regular, well-beaten paths 

 in any place where they are at all plentiful. 

 The band I was following had, as is their 

 custom, all run together into a wedge- 

 shaped mass when I fired, and crashed off 

 through the woods in a bunch during the 

 first moments of alarm. The footprints in 

 the soil showed that they had in the be- 

 ginning taken a plunging gallop, but after 

 a few strides had settled into the swinging, 

 ground-covering trot that is the elk's most 

 natural and characteristic gait. A band of 

 elk when alarmed is likely to go twenty 



