THE BIG BULL ELK OF COLORADO 363 



one of tliem little spiked bulls." Well, I couldn't and I 

 wouldn't, though now they had crossed the open to our 

 side and were passing within sixty yards. That bugle I 

 knew well had been sounded by no stripling. Yet I crept 

 stealthily forward to survey them at leisure, Fan following 

 at my heels, showing no excitement (as I feared she might), 

 but thinking rather, as the Judge afterwards put it, " we 

 were just going a-milking." 



Ah ! what yonder ? Something quite different — some- 

 thing lord-like, lion-like, his enormous antlers towering 

 above him as the spars of an old-time man-of-war, his 

 swollen crest and his black bushy front proclaiming him 

 champion as he was challenger of the forest. He threw 

 his shrill call once as he stepped into the open, as it might 

 have been into an arena, then tossed his mighty head, and 

 wended his way very deliberately after the members of 

 his harem. A more magnificent sight in a more magni- 

 ficent scene it w^ould be impossible to picture, he the 

 central figure in an amphitheatre more imposing a 

 hundred times than any ever devised or adapted in 

 Roman Italy or Sicily. 



His whole fate seemed already to rest on my trigger- 

 finger. The hero of a hundred fights was approaching 

 his doom at the hands of an antagonist unfairly armed as 

 compared with all he had met before, whose assaults w^ere 

 marked in many a deep scar on his rugged sides. Sailing 

 onward like a three-decker, he bore slowly down upon us, 

 while I sat Wimbledon-fashion, with elbows on my knees, 

 and waited the moment to bring him, easily as I thought, 

 to book. Ah, the dashing of cup from lip is the com- 

 monest incident of human fate ! Another minute would 

 have brought him broadside on, and the prize would have 

 been mine ; but there sounded on my ear from an interval 

 of several yards in rear the same whispered voice that so 

 recently had bade me kill the fat yearling. Again I heard 

 the word "shoot," and I heard also some caution as to 

 the game getting nearer. At first I would pay no heed, 

 but satisfied myself with laying my rifle in position, and 

 preparing for a shot should the big bull by chance take 

 alarm. The whispered instruction was rapidly repeated, 



