148 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



north side of the river, at the mouth of Sand Creek, and 

 ready to start out on our trip up the creek valley to the high 

 hills that could be dimly seen to the north, and said to be 

 twenty miles away. Sand Creek is about thirty feet wide, 

 with a sandy bed, low banks, and very shallow water, and 

 at the time we were there entirely dry in places, the water 

 standing often only in occasional pools. It has a valley 

 from one to two miles wide and undulating tracts of land 

 on either side of its valley, the whole rising gradually as one 

 goes north, and becoming rough, broken, high and rocky 

 as the head of the valley is approached. We were now fair- 

 ly on our way — everything had gone well so far — could not 

 have been better or more to our liking. 



Within a mile of the river we flushed a covey of sage 

 hens, and Charley brought down one with each barrel of 

 his gun as they rose to fly. The sage hen is a species 

 of plains grouse about twice as large as the sharp tail grouse. 

 A flock of them reminds one strongly of a flock of half 

 grown wild turkeys. Our supper was now provided for as 

 it seemed, but I had strong doubts about it, as I had become 

 acquainted with the merits of the sage hen many years be- 

 fore. However, we cooked them for supper, but made our 

 meal principally on biscuit, fried bacon and tea, the sage 

 hens having too strong a flavor of their natural food, the 

 leaves and buds of the artemisia or wild sage. It is said 

 that the young ones in August and September, when their 

 food is chiefly grasshoppers and crickets, are excellent eat- 

 ing. It has never been my lot to taste one at that time of 

 year. 



About four o'clock, as the November days are short, 

 finding a nice, grassy, sheltered place, we went into camp, 

 gathered a big pile of dry sage brush for fuel, cooked and 

 ate supper, staked out the pony where the grass was good, 

 made down our bed, put on our coats and over these a blan- 

 ket, for the evening was cool and a moderate north wind 



