A SPLENDID HUNTING-GKOUND. 323 



verge of D. T., so that his mistaking a horse for a bear was 

 not to be wondered at. 



I slept at our old camp on Spring Creek that night, and 

 reached the new one by the afternoon of the next day, and 

 found the Colonel had just come in from a hunt, and very 

 enthusiastic about the amount of game in this place which he 

 had discovered. He had seen two bands of elk that morning 

 and no end of deer; bear-sign, too, was everywhere. The 

 men said that they had heard elk close to the tent in the night, 

 so that things looked very promising. The camp had been 

 pitched on a beautiful spot, a small plateau at the foot of 

 the Snowy Range about six thousand feet above, and with 

 a view over the greater portion of the Judith Basin. The 

 mountains behind us were a long line of jagged peaks, rising 

 out of dense pine-forests. The Colonel took me to a point 

 close by and showed me a band of elk feeding, before I 

 had been ten minutes in camp ; and on my way to where they 

 were we jumped three small bands of blacktails. I got one of 

 the elk after a very easy stalk, and three deer on my way back, 

 taking all the meat into camp, as I had asked Tendoi to come 

 and see us, and knew that he would be glad of it. I never 

 saw so many deer as there were here; we often jumped them 

 when going to picket the horses, within a quarter of a mile of 

 the tent, and found fresh tracks in the snow almost every 

 morning, where they had been even nearer than that. One 

 day, when out with Fishel, we passed a tumble-down cabin, 

 Fishel remarking that this was where the " greenhorns" 

 wintered, and when I asked him what he meant, he told me 

 that two years before, deer-skins being then worth more than 



Y2 



