ON A CATTLE-RANGE 305 



of blood, watched two of the bulls disappearing over 

 a distant flat, and were returning somewhat puzzled 

 and disappointed to our horses on the prairie above, 

 when in a hollow, and in thick cover, a great pair of 

 horns arose in front of us. My old bull, badly hit, 

 had lain down in the thick cover just out of sight over 

 the edge of the hill. A snapshot through the trees 

 failed to stop him, and he disappeared in the thick 

 wood, to reappear in the open some three hundred 

 yards away. He slowly made his way into a second 

 gulch and disappeared. 



We followed cautiously, and, coming to the second 

 gulch, there jumped a range grizzly and three cubs, 

 who galloped rapidly across the valley below us. The 

 temptation was not to be resisted. I got in six shots 

 before the bears were out of sight, killing the old she- 

 bear and one cub, the rest of the family getting clear 

 away. 



There was still the big bull elk to be accounted for ; 

 but he was nowhere in sight, and, to my dismay, I 

 found I had only one cartridge left. 



We climbed the far side of the gulch, and there, in 

 the next hollow, lay the elk, evidently in articulo 

 mortis. A bullet from my last cartridge finished him. 



It so happened that the first bullet, and the one 

 that secured this bull, was a solid bullet. I had a few 

 solid-bullet cartridges with me that season, and, more 

 by chance than design, had some in my pocket that 

 day. This particular bullet had struck the elk on the 

 outside point of the haunch, and had penetrated for- 

 ward through the vitals, finally lodging under the skin 

 of the shoulder on the opposite side, whence I took it 

 out almost uninjured. The probabilities are that an 

 expanding bullet would not, in the angle of this par- 



20 



