ALONE ON A MOUNTAIN 155 



process of the Japanese. On a commanding point, I 

 found a clump which was crescent-shaped, with its con- 

 vex side toward the west wind, and in its embrace I 

 halted for half an hour to gaze over the top of the 

 evergreen barricade. The encircled ground had been 

 tramped bare, and it was evident that many a goat and 

 sheep had recently sheltered there. 



The mountain slope that swept down to Bull River 

 was a gray and melancholy waste. From a short distance 

 below the summit, fire had devastated the mountain side, 

 killing every tree, and exposing all the outcroppings of 

 rugged rock and cliff. Near by, the tall gray tree- 

 trunks, shorn of their branches, were like untrimmed 

 telegraph-poles; farther on, we saw what seemed to be 

 a forest of hop-poles, and beyond that appeared a thin 

 mantle of gray quills, like the covering of a hedgehog. 



Two miles away, the east fork of Bull River mean- 

 dered through a narrow valley of dead timber, and on its 

 farther side, narrow valleys climbed up westward, until 

 they stopped abruptly in regulation rock basins, bounded 

 by precipitous cliffs. And even as I looked across, and 

 wondered what big game might be therein, I heard the 

 unmistakable " Ser-lam ! " of a hunter's rifle. Some one 

 was hunting in the rugged valley directly opposite my 

 eyrie, and had found game. Who could it be, in that 

 wild place? Surely it was no one from the Elk River 

 Valley. 



In the course of an hour, I heard about twelve shots; 

 but two months elapsed ere I learned that the hunters 

 were from Fort Steele, and were in quest of mule deer. 



