THE VIRGIlSriA DEER. 



197 



It was a dreary day — cold, cloudy, and cheerless as my 

 own thoughts. There were but two section-houses in the 

 twenty odd miles to be traversed. Once in awhile a great 

 gray sage-cock would dart across the trail, and on the sum- 

 mit of a distant hill I saw the branching antlers of a Black- 

 tailed Deer. A pair of green-winged teal arose from the 

 surface of a brackish pool, and I wondered what they were 

 doing in such a God-forsaken region. Then the canon grew 

 more narrow. Its northern side was a precipice of naked 

 rock. Here and there a hole in the wall and a blackened 

 dump showed where prospectors had sought for coal, but 

 now everything was the personification of desolation. 



It was past noon when I reached the station, section- 

 house, and corral that are named, on the Union Pacific's 

 time-card, Point of Rocks. Here the hills broke, and a road 

 — scarce more than a trail — led northward to the valley of 

 the Sweetwater and to the beauties of the Yellowstone. From 

 this point my route lay northward into the heart of the 

 game-preserve. It was too late in the season for the regular 

 teamsters. Two weeks ago the last wagon-train had started 

 for Lander, Atlantic, and South Pass. It would be April 

 or May before they returned. Fortunately, Frank Moffat, 

 the station-agent's brother, and Si Johnson, his partner, 

 were at the depot, and the next morning were going twenty 

 miles northward to their lonely ranch, to look after their 

 cattle. A hunting-trip was quickly made up, and I rejoiced 

 at the thought of going into, to me, a terra incognita. By 

 the aid of a musty pile of yellow-covered fiction, and the 

 cheerful conversation of the cowboys, the afternoon and 

 evening jjassed quickly away, and we started early the next 

 morning for the mountains. 



A long and dreary ride lay before us, and it was too cold 

 to devote any attention to the grandeur of the desert 

 scenery. About five o'clock we reached Moffat's ranch, 

 where a hundred or two gaunt steers were gathered about 

 a bog-hole, and a shed half-sunk in the hill-side sheltered 

 half a dozen range horses. The cabin was built at the edge 

 of the mesa, where it caught the full force of the bitter 



