HUNTING THE PRONG-BUCK. 93 



they stand much persecution before leav- 

 ing it. 



One December, an old hunter whom I knew 

 told me that such a band was wintering a few 

 miles from a camp where two line-riders of 

 the W Bar brand were stationed; and I made 

 up my mind to ride thither and kill a couple. 

 The line camp was twenty miles from my 

 ranch; the shack in which the old hunter 

 lived was midway between, and I had to stop 

 there to find out the exact lay of the land. 



At dawn, before our early breakfast, I sad- 

 dled a tough, shaggy sorrel horse ; hastening 

 in-doors as soon as the job was over, to warm 

 my numbed fingers. After breakfast I started, 

 muffled in my wolf-skin coat, with beaver-fur 

 cap, gloves, and snaps, and great felt over- 

 shoes. The windless air was bitter cold, the 

 thermometer showing well below zero. Snow 

 lay on the ground, leaving bare patches here 

 and there, but drifted deep in the hollows. 

 Under the steel-blue heavens the atmosphere 

 had a peculiar glint as if filled with myriads 

 of tiny crystals. As I crossed the frozen 

 river, immediately in front of the ranch house, 

 the strangely carved tops of the bluffs were 

 reddening palely in the winter sunrise. Prai- 

 rie fowl were perched in the bare cottonwoods 

 along the river brink, showing large in the 

 leafless branches ; they called and clucked to 

 one another. 



Where the ground was level and the snow 

 not too deep I loped, and before noon I 

 reached the sheltered coulie where, with long 

 poles and bark, the hunter had built his tepee- 

 wigwam, as eastern woodsmen would have 



