Hunting the Mule -Deer in Colorado. 271 



had yet to learn how to look. There is something in knowing a 

 deer when you see him. A friend tried long and faithfully to show a 

 deer, standing in full view, to an eager but untrained sportsman, and 

 then had to shoot it before he could see it. He saw it when it fell 

 down, kicking. You look among bowlders and logs, and all are 

 perhaps alike to you ; but by and by a bowlder surprises you by 

 jumping, without warning, twenty feet into the air, over another very 

 large one, perhaps, and almost always up-hill ; and, while your heart 

 bumps your mouth open, the bowlder disappears, and you say, "Oh! 

 why didn't I shoot him?" Sure enough, why ? 



It is a most surprising thing to see a deer get up on its legs, — at 

 home, I mean, and when he would prefer to be alone. Watch a cow 

 at the same operation. Laborious elevation of one end, then of the 

 other ; then a great yawn, and a cracking of joints, and a lazy twist 

 of the tail and a mighty snort of bovine satisfaction, and she is ready 

 to go to pail or pasture. But she don't budge, mind, without the 

 regular formula. How does a buck start for pasture when you drive 

 him up in the morning? Why, he lies with his four feet under him, 

 and when he is ready to go it is like Jack getting out of the box. 

 The tremendous extensor muscles contract with all the power and 

 facility rest and warmth have given them, and the plump body, like 

 a well- inflated rubber ball propelled by a vigorous kick, flies lightly 

 into the air. The simile is borne out as it seems about to 

 descend ; light as thistle-down it nears the earth ; another giant 

 impulse from an unseen power — crash — and again it describes its 

 light parabola ; crack — bump — thud — thud — thud — each time 

 fainter than the last, and your surprise is all that remains. 



The time, patience, effort, and study I spent during that winter 

 and the summer and winter following in learning how to outwit that 

 subtlest of all harmless creatures would have mastered a much more 

 exact science. I realized a degree of success, however ; and when I 

 stood over my first buck, not chance slain, but really outdone in 

 craft, shot through the heart as he sprang to his feet and turned to 

 see me not twenty steps away, — seeing me and suspecting danger 

 only at the instant of his death, while I had followed him for hours, 

 unsuspected, patiently, perseveringly, — I felt that the achievement 

 was worth all it had cost. Meantime, I had risen with the morning 

 star for days together, crept through miles upon miles of all sorts of 



