SPORT AND TRAVEL 275 



About midday I left the valley and climbed the 

 mountain-side to my right until I reached some very 

 rocky and precipitous ground just above timber line, 

 which had appeared to me from below to be likely 

 looking ground for sheep. But seeing nothing and 

 no tracks, and finding the frozen slopes, from which 

 the snow had been blown away, dangerously slippery, 

 I descended again into the pine forest beneath the 

 shelter of which the snow still lay pretty deep. Pres- 

 ently I struck the fresh trail of a large buck mule 

 deer and followed it to where the animal had been 

 lying in the snow since it had left off feeding in the 

 morning. It had, however, chosen its resting-place 

 very cunningly on the thickly timbered slope of a 

 deep ravine ; and although I must have got very near 

 it, I never saw it, though the tracks in the snow 

 showed me how it had gone off at my approach in 

 the succession of jumps invariably resorted to by 

 mule deer when suddenly disturbed. After this I 

 saw the tracks of a big bull wapiti which I think 

 must have passed the previous night, but it was 

 then too late to think of following them. Indeed, 

 when I reached my horse, it was fast growing dusk, 

 and was nearly dark when I got back to camp. On 

 my way down the main creek I just caught a glimpse 

 of a wapiti bull. I saw him dash out of a small 

 cluster of pine-trees, gallop across a piece of open 

 ground, and plunge into a cottonwood grove skirting 

 the river. It was still light enough to allow me to 



