28 The Wilderness Hunter. 



galloped ; we were so high that we could look far and 

 wide over all the country round about. To the south- 

 ward, across a dozen leagues of rolling and broken 

 prairie, loomed Sentinel Butte, the chief landmark of all 

 that region. Behind us, beyond the river, rose the weird 

 chaos of Bad Lands which at this point lie for many miles 

 east of the Little Missouri. Their fantastic outlines 

 were marked against the sky as sharply as if cut with a 

 knife ; their grim and forbidding desolation warmed into 

 wonderful beauty by the light of the dying sun. On our 

 right, as we loped onwards, the land sunk away in smooth 

 green-clad slopes and valleys ; on our left it fell in sheer 

 walls. Ahead of us the sun was sinking behind a mass 

 of blood-red clouds ; and on either hand the flushed skies 

 were changing their tint to a hundred hues of opal and 

 amethyst. Our tireless little horses sprang under us, 

 thrilling with life ; we were riding through a fairy world 

 of beauty and color and limitless space and freedom. 



Suddenly a short hundred yards in front three black- 

 tail leaped out of a little glen and crossed our path, with 

 the peculiar bounding gait of their kind. At once I 

 sprang from my horse and, kneeling, fired at the last and 

 largest of the three. My bullet sped too far back, but 

 struck near the hip, and the crippled deer went slowly 

 down a ravine. Running over a hillock to cut it off, I 

 found it in some brush a few hundred yards beyond and 

 finished it with a second ball. Quickly dressing it, I 

 packed it on my horse, and trotted back leading him ; an 

 hour afterwards we saw through the waning light the 

 quaint, home-like outlines of the ranch house. 



