VI 



Prairie Fires 149 



the desert is infinitely varied and beautiful in 

 comparison to a burnt prairie. We had to ride 

 one day at a hand-gallop to get through ; the wind 

 blew half a gale, and whirled the burnt grass and 

 sand about to such an extent as to make it almost 

 impossible to face it. It was not quite so bad as 

 our ride from the Medecine last year but very nearly.^ 

 We have had every kind of weather, from sharp 

 winter to bright summer, to-day is of the latter, 

 warm and delightful, to-morrow we may be shivering 

 with 15° below zero. The elk are evidently getting 

 scarce ; we only killed seventeen, just the number 

 we killed last year in one afternoon. The prairie 

 fires drive them about too much, and I fancy that a 

 very few years will see their utter extinction. We 

 were more successful in the trapping line, and, 

 particularly, caught one enormous beaver ; I have 

 prepared its skin for you. I have also a very large 

 badger skin, the original owner of which I shot the 

 other day ; he seemed to be as old as the hills and 

 was as fat as butter. We ate him, but he was not 

 worth much ; a raccoon, on the other hand, was 

 excellent, tasting like very good sucking pig ; oddly 

 enough, in the treeless country they walk about in 

 the open ! We rather expected an Indian fight the 

 other day whilst we were away on the North Platte 



^ I can find no account of the Doctor's ride from the Medecine in 

 his letters, but I can remember him saying that, on one occasion, they 

 had to ride so hard to the Fort in order to escape from a blizzard that 

 the horse of one of the party died immediately after they had gone in. 



