ROCKIES IN SEPTEMBER 125 



scenery. When the sheltering spruce was reached, it was 

 time to loose off ; else, though he had apparently no 

 suspicion, and merely tossed his antlers casually, in 

 obedience to habit, he would soon be within the wood 

 and secure. The grass reached almost to his back ; and 

 the white patch of his tail was towards me. I was madly 

 keen for the shot and for that branching head that rose aloft 

 occasionally from the herbage. My breath went fast, from 

 my hurrying stalk and from the rarity of the air, which at 

 that altitude hardly allows a new comer to lace his boots 

 without panting. I squatted as one used to squat for the 

 deer target at Wimbledon ; but I found myself below the 

 grass. Then I stood up and whistled in the hopes that he 

 might look round. Twice, three times ; no notice taken ; 

 and he was fast disappearing, when some choicer bits of 

 grass moved his appetite aside, and he turned his right 

 shoulder for a moment. Quickly I took the shot as I 

 stood ; then when the rifle was at my shoulder I frankly 

 confess I liked neither the shrouding grass nor the blur of 

 the sun on my foresight. But I pulled steadily as I could. 

 To my relief the antlers went up, and the big buck sank 

 down to the shot. The bullet, as I quite expected, had 

 struck him full high, but full fatally, just under the back- 

 bone behind the withers. It took him down, as the 

 hunters express it, then and there ; and the big buck was 

 mine. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



ROCKIES IX SEPTEMBER {continued) 



Last chapter told of the death of the big buck at sun- 

 rise — the " Sullivan-buck " we called him afterwards, as he 

 hung in camp, all America at that time being aglow with 

 the great Sullivan-Corbet fight at New Orleans. John and 

 I swore to take the carcase in whole; and a great and unne- 

 cessary job we gave ourselves in consequence, and in spite 

 of our having the pack mule and packing-rope at hand. 



I should have premised that while the lifeblood flowed 

 out of the stricken deer's throat, from the knife-cut, I 

 strolled onward upon the adjacent slopes. Deer were 



