IN HELL CREEK BADLANDS. 



355 



There must be an operation this afternoon, 

 shore, or she can't live." 



This was at the L U-bar ranch, and 7 

 o'clock in the morning. Jim mounted Bull 

 j^up, his best horse, took a handful of 

 cigars, a box of matches, and galloped away. 

 At 4 o'clock that afternoon he reached 

 Miles City, 70 miles away, without chang- 

 ing horses. Sorry was no name for what 

 we felt, though not for ourselves. Huff- 

 man, the cook and I went on alone, to find 

 Hell creek as best we could, hunt deer and 

 return. I was elected foreman and be- 

 came assistant horse wrangler, all in one 



day. 



After leaving Jerdon's on the Big Dry, 

 we saw not a human soul en route, and 

 having missed the dim trail we were told 

 to follow to the Egad ranch, we presently 

 found ourselves we knew not where. We 

 swung half way around old Smoky butte, 

 the finest landmark in all that region, in 

 a semi-circle, having a radius of 30 miles, 

 and at last reached the top of the Big Dry- 

 Missouri divide. In doubt and wonder, we 

 followed a dim trail 20 miles, knowing that 

 it led toward the badlands; until at 

 last it ended abruptly at a picturesque log 

 cabin standing on a steep hill side 70 feet 

 above— Hell creek! It was the jumping- 

 off place of wagon transport. By sheer good 

 luck we blundered straight into one of the 

 finest spots in all Montana for hunting and 

 picture making. All the ranchmen on the 

 North side could not have piloted us to a 

 finer location than the one found by in- 

 tuition. 



Max Sieber is a "wolfer," and a ranch- 

 man besides, and he was nice to us through- 

 out our stay. .He is a solitary old bachelor, 

 with no end of interesting history as buffalo 

 hunter, Texas cowboy, and wolfer. His 

 ranch buildings stand aibove the best spring 

 in all that region, and at the edge of the 

 richest grass lands I ever saw in the West. 

 The high, rolling upland was covered with 

 spear grass and bunch grass nearly knee 

 high, and our horses stuffed themselves 

 with it nightly, until they could hold no 

 more. Here is where the big buffalo herds 

 used to lay on fat in the fall before mi- 

 grating farther South in the winter. 



At "Wolfer's Roost," the grass lands 

 break off into fragments, and from there to 

 the Missouri river and beyond the bad- 

 lands simply defy description. Huffman's 

 splendid photographs tell their story as 

 words of mine never can ; and if ever I 

 gave thanks for the presence of an expert 

 photographer, it was there. The 5x8 pic- 

 tures he made on that trip, 36 in number, 

 are the "finest ever," and h^H T been com- 

 pelled to choose on the spot between pic- 

 tures and game, it would have been pictures 

 by an overwhelming majority. 



Every hunter who has not yet hunted the 



mule deer in really magnificent badlands, 

 has something coming to him from the 

 hand of Fortune. The hunter does not 

 live whose soul would not be thrilled by 

 the sublime spectacle of those miles upon 

 miles of ragged chasms, and the fantastic 

 heights that rise between them. At a 

 hundred points, the level mesa breaks off 

 in sharp, wedge-like headlands, which 

 thrust out into space and drop far down to 

 the canyons where the pines and junipers 

 find shelter for their roots. There are sec- 

 tions of canyon walls so built up and 

 so high placed that they look like ruined 

 castles from the heights of the Rhine. 



The artistic effect of the dark, green pines 

 that are sprinkled through the gulches and 

 over the butte sides, is of great value in 

 toning down the rugged aspect of the bad- 

 lands. Great beds of trailing juniper cling 

 here and there like clumps of dark green 

 moss, to soften the harsh angularity of the 

 rugged ridges. Nature knows the artistic 

 value of contrast quite as well as man. 



Four miles Westward from Hell creek, 

 the ragged gulches and angular ridges give 

 way to a series of long, rolling billows of 

 land, smoothly rounded at all points ; and 

 the valleys between are well filled with 

 pines and cedars. In contrast with the 

 rougher regions, these are as soothing and 

 restful to the eye as the vistas of an Eng- 

 lish park. Here we found bunches of mule 

 •deer does feeding, and straightway Huff- 

 man called the region the Does' Pasture. 

 All these ridges and gulches and canyons 

 terminated in the narrow, level valley of 

 Snow creek, through which the stream 

 wound to and fro, its curiously regular sinu- 

 osities marked by a golden chain of young 

 cottonwoods, fast dropping the last half 

 of their autumn leaves. 



East of friend Sieber's ranch, the bad- 

 lands were still different. Over a wide 

 stretch of fairly even country, rose isolated 

 groups of tall 'buttes, mountains in minia- 

 ture, a mile or so apart. Among the blasted 

 spur roots of these desolate monuments, 

 the solitary mule deer love to hide and 

 feed on the rank clumos of narrow-leaved 

 mugwort that grow in those sterile situa- 

 tions. At that time all the bucks we found, 

 save one, were in this country of scattered 

 buttes, and all the large bucks were solitary. 

 The bucks and does bunch in November. 



It was on our first trip into this region, 

 and only 3 miles from our camp at Sie- 

 ber's ranch, that I made my score. Huff- 

 man was prospecting alone half a mile dis- 

 tant. Sieber and I were together, and just 

 after picking up the front horn of a tri- 

 ceratops (for particulars see Mr. Lucas' 

 "Animals of the Past"), Max said, "If you 

 will come up to the too of this butte with 

 me, I will show you where I missed a fine, 

 big buck last winter." 



