410 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
foot sinks deep into the light soil, for the earth is full of little 
tunnels, and every tunnel is choked with garnered pine-cones ; 
whilst in the high places amongst the rocks you come now and 
again upon a miniature haystack, neatly cut, and made of dried 
Alpine flowers and grasses, prepared for winter use by one of 
Nature’s invisible workers. 
As you lie upon the hill-side in the warm sun at noon, with 
the timber all below you and a good day’s work behind you, 
you will have time to note these things ; but just now, though 
the stars are still visible, you should not be ‘foolin’ around 
camp’ any longer, if you want to get a shot at a bull before 
sundown. 
It is no good pleading that you have toiled for a fortnight 
and seen nothing ; that your limbs ache, your clothes are torn 
to rags, and your hands and feet wounded by the beastly dead 
timber. Such heads as bull elk wear in Colorado can only be 
earned nowadays by early rising, long patience, and honest 
hard work ; so off with you, while the rime is on the sage 
brush, in spite of the temptation to stop until Sam has cooked 
just one rasher of sow-belly. The first crossing of the brook, 
before you are a hundred yards from camp, will effectually 
wake you up and make you step out, unless you want to ‘freeze 
solid,’ for the stepping-stones at this early hour are coated with 
ice, and neither courage nor caution, neither moccasins, nails, 
nor even sand, can save you from a cold plunge. Great 
Czesar’s ghost ! how cold it is ; and how warm even the wood- 
land bogs strike after that running water ! 
Here, within half a mile of your camp, is the first sign of 
elk ; a great wallow made in the marsh late yesterday evening, 
and running from the wallow is a trail, well beaten, which 
leads, as you know, by a very circuitous route to that bare — 
patch of red mud where the elk lick for alkali. But we have 1 
no time to follow the trail to-day, more especially as the elk — 
seem to leave the lick before dawn. Our hunting-ground is in 7 
a belt of burnt timber very-near the top of the divide, and to — 
reach it in time we must climb straight up one ridge after ~ 
