Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer
came down from the hills into the streets, and ate hay a few yards
from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic
sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till
May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the
government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of
hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their
feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown
bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way.
The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in
the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even
the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were
left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was
evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,--a hunger that seems
to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth
on his hunting trips for big game in the West.
We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp
days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three
camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the
northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner
River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on
horseback.