206 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



one. There was a cut bank six or seven feet high in the 

 direction in which he was trying to go, over which he fell, 

 striking on his head, and breaking off one horn. Two of 

 his legs were broken by the shot, and one buck shot went 

 through his heart. 



Porter came to camp at dusk mourning over his bad 

 luck and regretting that he did not hang to his shot gun — 

 he missed with the rifle, an elk's head, not more than fifteen 

 steps away — the body being hidden by some bushes. 



One other unusual thing happened during this hunting 

 trip, that will here be related, although it does not properly 

 come under the head of "Lying in wait for game." It is 

 one of the curious and uncommon things that one will oc- 

 casionally meet with if he spends much time among the 

 wild animals of the woods and prairies. 



Two or three days before we moved camp, as referred 

 to above, I was hunting in company with Charley Mathew- 

 son. I suppose he was without a rival as a hunter in all 

 this part of the country. At any rate he was the best at a 

 running shot of any man with whom I ever hunted. We 

 were running ravines together — that is, he would take one 

 side of a ravine, and I would take the other, and keeping 

 well up near the top of the bank, we would thus trace the 

 whole length of it, and if a deer jumped out of the brush 

 or weeds, one of us, and perhaps both would be pretty sure 

 to get a shot. We had followed one ravine in this manner 

 to its head without seing any game except two deer that 

 crossed our course ahead of us, then, striking another ravine 

 farther west we began following it down to the valley. We 

 1 ad not gone far before I saw a black tail buck lying down 

 near the bottom of the ravine. He was lying with his head 

 from me, in plain sight, and not more than seventy-five 

 steps away. Mr. Mathewson was on the other side of a 

 small, but deep side draw, and not in position to see the 



