THE VIRGINIA DEER. 197 



It was a dreary day cold, cloudy, and cheerless as my 

 own thoughts. There were but two section-houses in the 

 twenty odd miles to be traversed. Once in awhile a great 

 gray sage-cock would dart across the trail, and on the sum- 

 mit of a distant hill I saw the branching antlers of a Black- 

 tailed Deer. A pair of green-winged teal arose from the 

 surface of a brackish pool, and I wondered what they were 

 doing in such a God-forsaken region. Then the canon grew 

 more narrow. Its northern side was a precipice of naked 

 rock. Here and there a hole in the wall and a blackened 

 dump showed where prospectors had sought for coal, but 

 now everything was the personification of desolation. 



It was past noon when I reached the station, section- 

 house, and corral that are named, on the Union Pacific's 

 time-card, Point of Rocks. Here the hills broke, and a road 

 scarce more than a trail led northward to the valley of 

 the Sweetwater and to the beauties of the Yellowstone. From 

 this point my route lay northward into the heart of the 

 game-preserve. It was too late in the season for the regular 

 teamsters. Two weeks ago the last wagon-train had started 

 for Lander, Atlantic, and South Pass. It would be April 

 or May before they returned. Fortunately, Frank Moffat, 

 the station-agent's brother, and Si Johnson, his partner, 

 were at the depot, and the next morning were going twenty 

 miles northward to their lonely ranch, to look after their 

 cattle. A hunting-trip was quickly made up, and I rejoiced 

 at the thought of going into, to me, a terra incognita. By 

 the aid of a musty pile of yellow-covered fiction, and the 

 cheerful conversation of the cowboys, the afternoon and 

 evening passed quickly away, and we started early the next 

 morning for the mountains. 



A long and dreary ride lay before us, and it was too cold 

 to devote any attention to the grandeur of the desert 

 scenery. About five o'clock we reached Moffat' s ranch, 

 where a hundred or two gaunt steers were gathered about 

 a bog-hole, and a shed half-sunk in the hill-side sheltered 

 half a dozen range horses. The cabin was built at the edge 

 of the mesa, where it caught the full force of the bitter 



