EARLY DAY STORIES. 141 



CHAPTER XIX. 

 A Hunting Trip to Wyoming. 



There were only two of us — Charley and I, and we 

 hardly knew where we were bound for. It had been several 

 years since I had been away on a hunting trip, and what 

 hunting had fallen to my lot in the past had mostly been 

 done in the early days in Antelope county, or the adjacent 

 counties of Wheeler and Holt, or sometimes even as far 

 away as Garfield and Custer counties. At the time of which 

 I am now writing, the elk and the antelope had entirely dis- 

 appeared from my old hunting grounds in the counties 

 named above, and deer were scarce, and what few were left 

 in the sandhills of Garfield and other counties were wild 

 and hard to find, and still harder to get a shot at when 

 found. But the spell had come upon me, and for months 

 I had been longing, and for weeks planning for the trip. 

 It so happened that this fall I could get release for a few 

 weeks from business, and it was too good a chance to lose. 

 Much of the time for years I had been in the employ of the 

 B. & M. Railroad company, as land examiner and appraiser, 

 consequently being furnished with annual passes not only 

 over their own road but over the C. & N. W. and it branches 

 as well; it cost me nothing for transportation. I owned a 

 new Winchester rifle, caliber 45-75, which had seen very 

 little use. I said the rifle was new, and in fact it was, al- 

 though it had been about eight years since it was bought, 

 there having been little chance in all that time to use it, 

 hence it looked almost as clean and new as when it first 

 came from the factory. Conditions for the trip were all 

 favorable, and the impulse was on me — it could not be re- 

 sisted. 



