Hunting the Prong-Buck. 83 



ranch house. No man who, for his good-fortune, has at 

 times in his life endured toil and hardship, ever fails^to 

 appreciate the strong elemental pleasures of rest after 

 labor, food after hunger, warmth and shelter after bitter 

 cold. 



So much for the winter hunting. But in the fall, 

 when the grass is dry as tinder, the antelope hunter, like 

 other plainsmen, must sometimes face fire instead of frost. 

 Fire is one of the most dreaded enemies of the ranchmen 

 on the cattle ranges ; and fighting a big prairie fire is a 

 work of extraordinary labor, and sometimes of danger. 

 The line of flame, especially when seen at night, undulat- 

 ing like a serpent, is very beautiful ; though it lacks the 

 terror and grandeur of the great forest fires. 



One October, Ferguson and I, with one of the cow- 

 hands, and a friend from the East, took the wagon for an 

 antelope hunt in the broken country between the Little 

 Missouri and the Beaver. The cowboy drove the wagon 

 to a small spring, near some buttes which are well distin- 

 guished by a number of fossil tree-stumps ; while the rest 

 of us, who were mounted on good horses, made a circle 

 after antelope. We found none, and rode on to camp, 

 reaching it about the middle of the afternoon. We had 

 noticed several columns of smoke in the southeast, show- 

 ing that prairie fires were under way ; but we thought 

 that they were too far off to endanger our camp, and ac- 

 cordingly unsaddled our horses and sat down to a dinner 

 of bread, beans, and coffee. Before we were through the 

 smoke began to pour over a ridge a mile distant in 

 such quantities that we ran thither with our slickers, 



