A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



jagged white and gray peaks and pinnacles of chalk and granite 

 were shimmering in the light of the rising sun. 



This was September i, 1900, the opening day of the big- 

 game season in Wyoming for that year, and Charlie was al- 

 ready watching a distant band of elk with the field-glasses 

 while the neglected bacon had burned to a crisp in the frying- 

 pan. After breakfast we . saddled our two picketed riding- 

 horses, and rode across the flats and up the mountain-side 

 toward the distant band of elk. When the slopes became too 

 steep for comfortable riding, we dismounted and climbed up- 

 ward, leading the horses by the bridle. 



An hour after starting, while we were scrambling along the 

 side of a timbered ravine, Charley suddenly stopped and pointed 

 to two spike-horns, or yearling bull elk, which were gazing at 

 us about fifty yards distant. Realizing that we must be in the 

 vicinity of the main band, we did not care to alarm these two 

 animals, so waited motionless for a quarter of an hour until they 

 had disappeared over the ridge, stopping to gaze at us every 

 few yards of their retreat. We now left our horses, and, 

 crawling around the slope of a gray butte, found ourselves 

 peering over a fallen tree at a band of about twenty-five elk 

 in the scattered timber a hundred yards distant. Some were 

 lying down and others feeding, while the bull, which carried 

 a ten-point head, was rubbing one of its sides against a spruce 

 within seventy yards of where we crouched. Charlie whispered 

 that we would see bulls with larger heads during the day, so 

 we crept back to the horses without alarming the band. When 

 we reached the top of the ridge we found a striking panorama 

 of mountain-peaks and deep canons spread out before us. 



As we sat on our horses and gazed upon the beautiful scene, 

 it all at once dawned upon me that what I had imagined to be 

 a collection of the white chalk rocks of the country, showing 

 above the brown weeds a hundred yards distant, were the 

 rumps of about twenty feeding antelope. All these animals 



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