150 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



Frank Earnest and one Jack Roberts, our hunters ; 

 and a boy, Bill Perkins by name, who drove the 

 waggon that carried our tents, stores, and personal 

 luggage, and did what he was pleased to call the 

 cooking. Bill was a hash-slinger of the most primi- 

 tive description, though in our cases a western 

 appetite served to cover a multitude of culinary sins. 

 In a weak moment I presented him one day with 

 a cookery-book brought out from home. It was 

 shortly consigned, and perhaps with some show of 

 reason, by Bill, amid a shower of profanity, to the 

 depths of the nearest brush. Every recipe in the 

 book appeared to commence with ' Take so many 

 eggs,' and these were an item of grocery not available 

 in a western hunting camp. 



A few days after our arrival at Fort Steele all 

 arrangements were completed, and our cavalcade of 

 a waggon, four riders, and a bunch of spare horses 

 started for a two months' hunting-trip north of the 

 Union Pacific Railroad into a part of Southern 

 Wyoming then comparatively unknown and little 

 hunted. 



The first night we camped on the North Platte 

 River some twenty miles from Fort Steele, and 

 enjoyed our first venison steak. I had been fortunate 

 enough that afternoon to kill an antelope in the open 

 country near the river, and from that day on our 

 camp was always supplied with the best of fresh 

 meat antelope, black-tail deer, or elk. A party of 

 soldiers, with the General in command, accompanied 

 us, much to Frank Earnest's disgust, for some part of 

 the way, and camped that night about half a mile 

 from us up the river. A commissariat waggon, well 

 aden from the canteen, was part of their equipment, 



