1 68 The Wilderness Hunter. 



occasionally ride through their haunts ; and so the hunters 

 only know vaguely of their existence. It thus happens 

 that the last individuals of a species may linger in a 

 locality for many years after the rest of their kind have 

 vanished ; on the Little Missouri to-day every elk (as in 

 the Rockies every buffalo) killed is at once set down as 

 " the last of its race." For several years in succession I 

 myself kept killing one or two such " last survivors." 



A yearling bull which I thus obtained was killed while in 

 company with my staunch friend Will Dow, on one of the 

 first trips which I took with that prince of drivers, old man 

 Tompkins. We were laying in our stock of winter meat ; 

 and had taken the wagon to go to a knot of high and 

 very rugged hills where we knew there were deer, and 

 thought there might be elk. Old Tompkins drove the 

 wagon with unmoved composure up, down, and across 

 frightful-looking hills, and when they became wholly 

 impassable, steered the team over a cut bank and up a 

 kind of winding ravine or wooded washout, until it became 

 too rough and narrow for farther progress. There was 

 good grass for the horses on a hill off to one side of us ; 

 and stunted cottonwood trees grew between the straight 

 white walls of clay and sandstone which hemmed in the 

 washout. We pitched our tent by a little trickling spring 

 and kindled a great fire, the fitful glare lighting the bare 

 cliffs and the queer, sprawling tops of the cottonwoods; 

 and after a dinner of fried prairie-chicken went to bed. 

 At dawn we were off, and hunted till nearly noon ; when 

 Dow, who had been walking to one side, beckoned to me 

 and remarked, " There 's something mighty big in the timber 



