1 68 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



country. We dried our streaming clothes inside the 

 warm ranch house and had a good supper, and that night 

 we rolled up in our blankets and tarpaulins, and slept 

 soundly in the lee of a big haystack. The ranch house 

 stood in the winding bottom of a creek; the flanking hills 

 were covered with stunted cedar, while dwarf cotton- 

 wood and box elder grew by the pools in the half-dried 

 creek bed. 



Next morning we had risen by dawn. The storm was 

 over, and it was clear and cold. Before sunrise we had 

 started. We were only some thirty miles away from my 

 ranch, and I directed the Sheriff how to go there, by strik- 

 ing east until he came to the main divide, and then fol- 

 lowing that down till he got past a certain big plateau, 

 when a turn to the right down any of the coulees would 

 bring him into the river bottom near the ranch house. 

 We wished ourselves to ride off to one side and try to 

 pick up another antelope. However, the Sheriff took the 

 wrong turn after getting to the divide, .and struck the 

 river bottom some fifteen miles out of his way, so that 

 we reached the ranch a good many hours before he did. 



When we left the wagon we galloped straight across 

 country, looking out from the divide across the great roll- 

 ing landscape, every feature standing clear through the 

 frosty air. Hour after hour we paced and loped on and 

 on over the grassy seas in the glorious morning. Once we 

 stopped, and I held the horses while Lambert stalked and 

 shot a fine prongbuck; then we tied his head and hams 

 to our saddles and again pressed forward along the divide. 

 We had hoped to get lunch at a spring that I knew of 



