The Prongborn Antelope 113 



until I was five or six miles from the ranch, and 

 then work carefully home through a likely coun- 

 try toward sunset, as by this arrangement I would 

 be in a good game region at the very time that 

 the animals were likely to stir abroad. It was a 

 glaring, late-spring day, and in the hot sun of 

 mid-afternoon I had no idea that anything would 

 be moving, and was not keeping a very sharp look- 

 out. After an hour or two's steady tramping I 

 came into a long, narrow valley, bare of trees and 

 brushwood, and strolled along it, following a 

 cattle trail that led up the middle. The hills 

 rose steeply into a ridge crest on each side, sheer 

 clay shoulders breaking the mat of buffalo-grass 

 which elsewhere covered the sides of the valley as 

 well as the bottom. It was very hot and still, and 

 I was paying but little attention to my surround- 

 ings, when my eye caught a sudden movement on 

 the ridge crest to my right, and, dropping on one 

 knee as I wheeled around, I saw the head and 

 neck of a prongbuck rising above the crest. The 

 animal was not above a hundred yards off, and 

 stood motionless as it stared at me. At the crack 

 of the rifle the head disappeared ; but as I sprang 

 clear of the smoke I saw a cloud of dust rise on 

 the other side of the ridge crest, and felt con- 

 vinced that the quarry had fallen. I was right. 

 On climbing the ridge crest I found that on the 

 other side it sank abruptly in a low cliff of clay, 



