518 RECREATION 
sagey draw. Just ahead of us was 
Lou, coolly waiting. 
“Geta.calf?” asked Thad. 
Lou nodded. 
“K-Bar,: this time,’ he said. He 
turned to: me, “You: ought to come 
along,” he said, cheerfully. “Met an 
old she bear with two cubs. She ran 
off with one cub, and the other climbed 
a ‘tree..-Tried: to, rope’ it out, but the 
branches were too thick.” 
That was all. 
“Well, foh less mavericks on this 
range,’ sighed Thad, as we jogged 
ranch-ward. 
’Twas three o’clock when we reached 
our haven. We unsaddled, released the 
horses, and dug up what we could for 
alunch. Thad extended himself on the 
bunk, and read a ragged magazine; 
Lou proceeded to mend his saddle with 
a piece of raw-hide; I strolled about, 
straightening my warped legs. By and 
by the other riders came in, stiffly dis- 
mounting. 
For us three this had been a compara- 
tively easy day; but not for all. We 
had ridden only some thirty miles, up 
and down, and were back before dark, 
* - * 
To. be a mountain cowboy means not 
only hard, incessant riding, in all 
weathers, but riding of the most des- 
perate and reckless nature. The moun- 
tain cows roam like wild things, and to 
run one down—even a calf—requires © 
disregarding timber and sage, rock and 
arroya. It is man’s work. 
The mountain ranges of Colorado 
are located, many of them, in the 
most inaccessible portions of the state; 
a no-man’s land, unfenced, and still 
untempered by railroad and tourist. 
To ride them with the cowboys cer- 
tainly teaches one the country, and 
no little woodcraft, and it is good fun. 

“DOC”? AND HIS BUCK 
How Skilful Still- hunting Succeeded After Eve 
Else Had Failed 
BY ERNEST McGAFFEY 
LE swais the wisest old buck in. 
Arkansas. What he didn’t know 
about horses and hounds, guns 
and ‘hunters, “runways” and “still- 
hunting,” wasn’t worth knowing. He 
hugged the swamps, he did, away down 
among the cane and the fallen timber, 
the cypress “knees” and the most re- 
mote recesses of the big woods. Let 
the bucks that wanted to get shot go 
up. on the timbered ridges where the 
browsing was better. Let them go up 
where the horses ‘could travel and the 
hounds run; where the hunters could 
steal around in their moccasins without 
making much more sound than a dead 
leaf falling from a blue-gum tree. But 
for that old buck, give him the dim 
recesses where rotten timber lay thickly 
about, and where the lightest footstep 
that ever fell would inevitably set the 
brittle débris a-crackle; where horses 
would sink belly-deep in the swamps, 
and where the stanchest hounds toiled 
wearily amid the quagmires and im- 
penetrable tangles of brake and cane. 
Even when they did come down there 
and waylay him, he was not the animal 
to flash his white “flag,” with a rolling 
gallop through the swamp and under- 
ae ees ey ae 
