66 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



branded, the beeves gathered and shipped, 

 long trips made to collect strayed animals, 

 and the trail stock driven from the breeding 

 to the fattening grounds. At that time all 

 the men-folk may have to be away in the 

 white-topped wagons, working -among the 

 horned herds, whether plodding along the 

 trail, or wandering to and fro on the range. 

 Late one summer, when my own house had 

 been thus closed for many months, I rode 

 thither with a friend to pass a week. The 

 place already wore the look of having slipped 

 away from the domain of man. The wild 

 forces, barely thrust back beyond the thresh- 

 old of our habitation, were prompt to spring 

 across it to renewed possession the moment 

 we withdrew. The rank grass grew tall in the 

 yard, and on the sodded roofs of the stable 

 and sheds; the weather-beaten log walls of 

 the house itself were one in tint with the 

 trunks of the gnarled cottonwoods by which 

 it was shaded. Evidently the woodland 

 creatures had come to regard the silent, de- 

 serted buildings as mere outgrowths of the 

 wilderness, no more to be feared than the 

 trees around them or the gray, strangely 

 shaped buttes behind. 



Lines of delicate, heart-shaped footprints 

 in the muddy reaches of the half-dry river-bed 

 showed where the deer came to water ; and 

 in the dusty cattle-trails among the ravines 

 many round tracks betrayed the passing and 

 repassing of timber wolves, — once or twice in 

 the late evening we listened to their savage 

 and melanclioly howling. Cotton-tail rabbits 

 burrowed under the verandah. Within doors 



