MY FIRST TRIP TO THE ROCKIES 185 



Boney Earnest, Frank's brother, had joined our 

 party a day or two before. He was in appearance a 

 splendid specimen of frontier manhood, the ideal 

 hero of western romance. He had just returned 

 from an expedition made in company with Texas 

 Jack, a well-known western scout, to the Wind River 

 Mountains of Wyoming, and was full of Indian and 

 hunting tales. It also appeared that he had quite 

 a turn for cooking ; and the amount of voluntary 

 assistance rendered by him and some other members 

 of our outfit to the beautiful octoroon in the kitchen 

 was truly remarkable. 



A few days after we found ourselves back at Fort 

 Steele on the eve of our departure for New York and 

 home. So ended one of the most enjoyable and 

 profitable hunting-trips I have ever undertaken. 

 From start to finish no contretemps had occurred to 

 mar our enjoyment or to interfere with sport. We 

 had obtained between us some thirty good wapiti 

 heads, as well as samples of antelope, black-tail deer, 

 and buffalo, also a range grizzly and a big-horn ram. 

 Tom Bate had also further varied our bag by shooting 

 a lynx. The ambition of the sportsman had been 

 fully satisfied for the time being. 



This is not the place fittingly to moralize on the 

 ethics of big - game shooting. I have elsewhere 

 Avritten of the causes that have so sadly diminished 

 the wild life of the Rockies, exterminated the buffalo, 

 and thinned out the thousands of wapiti, deer, and 

 antelope that formerly populated these then happy 

 and fruitful hunting-grounds. Among these active 

 causes the British sportsman is not included. We 

 hardly ever killed the females of their kind, the cow 

 ,elk or the doe deer, simply because we did not want 



