116 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



of it swampy and covered with willow brush. This afford- 

 ed cover so that we could walk rapidly most of the way, 

 only now and then having to stoop, or crawl on hands and 

 knees. And now a very unusual thing happened. While 

 going through the willow brush we came upon first, two 

 deer lying down not more than twenty steps away. They 

 got up, made a few jumps and stood looking at us until we 

 were out of sight. We had scarcely left these two, when 

 we came onto three more deer, a large buck and two does, 

 not more than sixty steps away. I drew a bead on the buck, 

 then taking down the gun said to Bob : "We are after elk 

 — these deer if they want to be shot can wait until tomor- 

 row." They were not at all alarmed, and ran off only a few 

 rods. There was little difficulty in getting within easy gun- 

 shot of the elk. They had now all gone into the river, some 

 of them having reached the opposite bank, and some having 

 stopped on a sand bar in mid stream. We were lying flat. 

 Bob at my right hand — the elk had seen us but were not 

 alarmed. I said, **Bob you take one on the right hand, I'll 

 take one on the left and shoot when I count three." We 

 each got an elk, one falling in the river the other getting to 

 the opposite bank. I fired the second time and wounded 

 another, but as it could almost keep up with the herd we 

 did not follow it. Bob felt proud enough — it was the first 

 time he had ever killed any large game. We could not drag 

 a whole elk across the stream by hand, and the quick sands 

 were too treacherous to use the team ; we therefore skinned 

 out the fore quarters and leaving them to the wolves and 

 ravens and drawing the skin from the fore quarters back 

 over the hind quarters so as to keep out the sand, we drew 

 the hind quarters to the north bank of the stream. We had 

 just time enough left before dark to move camp to the place 

 already selected near the Custer county line. We now 

 wanted two or three deer to make out the load. 



