MY FIRST TRIP TO THE ROCKIES 155 



I have met men who have found it difficult to 

 believe that any animal could grow such a length 

 and beam of horn in three or four months. It was 

 evidently a strain on their credulity. Two ' globe- 

 trotters ' on one occasion, in my hearing, were dis- 

 puting as to the number of years it must have taken 

 to grow a particularly line elk-head of eighteen points 

 ornamenting the outside door of a saloon in a frontier 

 town on the Union Pacific Railroad. Finally they 

 appealed to a westerner standing by, a well-known 

 local sporting authority. ' Wai/ drawled he, ' I reckon 

 that is a good head ; it probably took pretty nigh 

 four months to grow!' The travellers without another 

 word turned away to their train, putting down their 

 informant at once as a western liar of the first water. 



To return now to the incidents of our first elk-hunt, 

 which occurred on the day of our arrival at that first 

 hunting-camp. It was a lovely August evening. 

 Bate and I had ridden on ahead of the waggon. To 

 our right was a steep mountain range, pine-clad, rocky, 

 the hunting-ground of our dreams. Ahead a long 

 green fringe of pine and cotton-wood trees ran out 

 into the plain, marking the course of a mountain 

 stream. On the steep bank beyond, among the green 

 timber, presently, to us appeared the movement of a 

 tawny-red body. Then three great magnified red- 

 deer, antlered, graceful, dignified, walked out on to 

 the ridge beyond the trees, stood for a moment at 

 gaze, and, evidently not liking our looks, made off 

 at a stately trot along the plain at the foot of the 

 mountain. Here, then, were the bull elk of Wyoming, 

 the first we had set eyes on, and that we had come 

 some 5,000 miles to hunt and kill. We were both 

 well mounted on two good western ponies. Bate 



