Ii6 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER, 



It was a wild, rough country, bare of trees 

 save for a fringe of cottonwoods along the 

 river, and occasional clumps of cedar on the 

 jagged, brown buttes ; as we went farther the 

 hills turned the color of chalk, and were 

 covered with a growth of pine. We came 

 upon acres of sunflowers as we journeyed 

 southward ; they are not as tall as they are in 

 the rich bottom lands of Kansas, where the 

 splendid blossoms, on their strong stalks, 

 stand as high as the head of a man on horse- 

 back. 



Though there were many cattle here, big 

 game was scarce. However, I killed plenty of 

 prairie chickens and sage hens for the pot ; 

 and as the sage hens were still feeding largely 

 on crickets and grasshoppers, and not ex- 

 clusively on sage, they were just as good eat- 

 ting as the prairie chickens. I used the rifle, 

 cutting off their heads or necks, and, as they 

 had to be shot on the ground, and often while 

 in motion, or else while some distance away, 

 it was more difficult than shooting off the 

 heads of grouse in the mountains, where the 

 birds sit motionless in trees. The head is a 

 small mark, while to hit the body is usually 

 to spoil the bird ; so I found that I averaged 

 three or four cartridges for every head neatly 

 taken off, the remaining shots representing 

 spoiled birds and misses. 



For the last sixty or seventy miles of our 

 trip we left the river and struck off across a 

 great, desolate gumbo prairie. There was no 

 game, no wood for fuel, and the rare water- 

 holes were far apart, so that we were glad 

 when, as we toiled across the monotonous 



