In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President
and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack
train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep
grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume,
"Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was
attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the
grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the
President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of
grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this
sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a
species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific
name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher.
Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell
Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad,
open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to
our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the
plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our
party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell
Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some
unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way part
of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and
bearing. After conversing a few moments with the President and Major
Pitcher, he rode rapidly away.