146 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



day to expect to see anything, and my intention was sim- 

 ply to walk out until I was five or six miles from the 

 ranch, and then work carefully home through a likely 

 country toward sunset, as by this arrangement I would 

 be in a good game region at the very time that the ani- 

 mals were likely to stir abroad. It was a glaring, late- 

 spring day, and in the hot sun of mid-afternoon I had no 

 idea that anything would be moving, and was not keep- 

 ing a very sharp lookout. After an hour or two's steady 

 tramping I came into a long, narrow valley, bare of trees 

 and brushwood, and strolled along it, following a cattle 

 trail that led up the middle. The hills rose steeply into 

 a ridge crest on each side, sheer clay shoulders breaking 

 the mat of buffalo-grass which elsewhere covered the 

 sides of the valley as well as the bottom. It was very hot 

 and still, and I was paying but little attention to my sur- 

 roundings, when my eye caught a sudden movement on 

 the ridge crest to my right, and, dropping on one knee 

 as I wheeled around, I saw the head and neck of a prong- 

 buck rising above the crest. The animal was not above 

 a hundred yards off, and stood motionless as it stared at 

 me. At the crack of the rifle the head disappeared; but 

 as I sprang clear of the smoke I saw a cloud of dust rise 

 on the other side of the ridge crest, and felt convinced 

 that the quarry had fallen. I was right. On climbing 

 the ridge crest I found that on the other side it sank 

 abruptly in a low cliff of clay, and at the foot of this, 

 thirty feet under me, the prongbuck lay with its neck 

 broken. After dressing it I shouldered the body entire, 

 thinking that I should like to impress the new-comers by 



