272 GITK, ROD, AND SADDLE. 



condition, although the v\-eathcr was frequently pinch- 

 ing cold. The canons in the neighborhood sup- 

 plied me witli abundance of game, and each day I 

 expected that a break in the weather would justify a 

 start for the eastern settlements. Of course one day 

 was only in outline a repetition of the other, but how 

 widely different in detail. In the morning the horses 

 were taken to the bottom, breakfast was cooked, 

 the enjoyable pipe lit, and the direction settled in 

 which I would hunt, returning earlier or later, accord- 

 ing to success. Tlie afternoon would pass mending 

 moccasins or clothes, cleaning arms or arrangiuii, 

 camp, procuring firewood, till it was time to hunt up 

 the nags, which being accomplished, and the evening 

 meal dispatched, on a bed of leaves I would smoke 

 myself to sleep, painting pictures of distant home till 

 no longer conscious. A hunter's camp always becomes 

 a rendezvous for two or three wolves, and two of 

 these scoundrels were seldom beyond sight. Latter- 

 ly they became so tame that they would come close 

 enough to pick up ji bone if thrown to tliem, and one 

 niglit when the cold was more rigorous than usual, 

 on awaking to add fVesli fuel to the lire, I saw one of 

 tliem sitting beside the warm embers, nodding his 

 head like a sleei)y listener to a prosy sermon. Every 



