178 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
between the twisted low-lying limbs of a sage- 
brush. Not until I laid hold of the kid to drag 
it out did it make a move. Then it struggled 
and gave a low bleat. 
Realizing that this might bring the mother 
like lightning I let go and rose up. There she 
was, coming like the wind, and only four or five 
hundred feet away, indifferent to the fact that 
man is the most dangerous of enemies. Just 
how close she might have come, just what might 
have happened had I not straightened up at that 
moment, is sheer guesswork. But the freed 
youngster butted me violently behind and then 
ran off to meet his mother. 
During most of the year the great silent 
plains are at rest in tawny and gray brown. The 
dreamy, sunny distances show only moving cloud 
shadows. A brief barrage of dust storm some- 
times sweeps across or a wild drive of tumble- 
weeds with a front from horizon to horizon 
goes bounding and rolling toward the rim, where 
they go over and vanish. But these endless 
distances are palpitating with flowers and song 
when the young antelope are born. 
One May morning a flock of blackbirds 
alighted upon a leafy cottonwood tree—a lone 
tuft in an empire of treeless distances. They 
sang all at once—a whirlwind of song. Two 
antelope herds were on separate skylines, 
