CHAPTER XIII 



PRONGHORN OF THE PLAINS 



I AWAKENED one morning out on the 

 Great Plains to find that in the dark I had 

 camped near the nursery of a mother ante- 

 lope and her two kids. It was breakfast time. 

 Commonly both antelope children nurse at 

 once, but this morning it was one at a time. 

 Kneeling down, the suckling youngster went 

 after the warm meal with a morale that never 

 even considered Fletcherizing. Occasionally he 

 gave a vigorous butt to hasten milk delivery. 

 Breakfast over, the mother had these young- 

 sters lie low in the short grass of a little basin. 

 She left them and began feeding away to the 

 south. The largest objects within a quarter of 

 a mile were a few stunted bunches of sagebrush. 

 I moved my sleeping bag a short distance into 

 an old buffalo wallow and watched her. She 

 fed steadily up a moderate slope but was always 

 in position where she could see the youngsters 

 and the approach of anything in the unob- 

 structed opening round them. This mother was 

 not eating the abundant buffalo grass celebrated 



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