i 9 4 HUNTING TRIPS 



the game to lie. The wagon was halted and 

 we pitched camp; there was plenty of dead 

 wood, and soon the venison steaks were broil- 

 ing over the coals raked from beneath the 

 crackling cottonwood logs, while in the nar- 

 row valley the ponies grazed almost within 

 the circle of the flickering fire-light. It was 

 in the cool and pleasant month of Septem- 

 ber; and long after going to bed we lay 

 awake under the blankets watching the stars 

 that on clear nights always shine with such 

 intense brightness over the lonely Western 

 plains. 



We were up and off by the gray of the 

 morning. It was a beautiful hunting day; 

 the sundogs hung in the red dawn ; the wind 

 hardly stirred over the crisp grass; and 

 though the sky was cloudless yet the weather 

 had that queer, smoky, hazy look that it is 

 most apt to take on during the time of the 

 Indian summer. From a high spur of the 

 table-land we looked out far and wide over 

 a great stretch of broken country, the brown 

 of whose hills and valleys was varied every- 



