HUNTING THE PRONG-BUCK; FROST, FIRE, AND THIRST
As with all other American game, man is a worse foe to the prong-horns
than all their brute enemies combined. They hold their own much better
than the bigger game; on the whole even better than the blacktail; but
their numbers have been wofully thinned, and in many places they have
been completely exterminated. The most exciting method of chasing them
is on horseback with greyhounds; but they are usually killed with the
rifle. Owing to the open nature of the ground they frequent the shots
must generally be taken at long range; hence this kind of hunting is
pre-eminently that needing judgment of distance and skill in the use
of the long-range rifle at stationary objects. On the other hand the
antelope are easily seen, making no effort to escape observation, as
deer do, and are so curious that in very wild districts to this day
they can sometimes be tolled within rifle shot by the judicious waving
of a red flag. In consequence, a good many very long, but tempting,
shots can be obtained. More cartridges are used, relatively to the
amount of game killed, on antelope, than in any other hunting.
Often I have killed prong-bucks while riding between the outlying
line camps, which are usually stationed a dozen miles or so back from
the river, where the Bad Lands melt into the prairie. In continually
trying long shots, of course one occasionally makes a remarkable hit.
Once I remember while riding down a broad, shallow coulie with two
of my cow-hands--Seawell and Dow, both keen hunters and among the
staunchest friends I have ever had--rousing a band of antelope which
stood irresolute at about a hundred yards until I killed one. Then
they dashed off, and I missed one shot, but with my next, to my own
utter astonishment, killed the last of the band, a big buck, just as
he topped a rise four hundred yards away. To offset such shots I have
occasionally made an unaccountable miss. Once I was hunting with the
same two men, on a rainy day, when we came on a bunch of antelope some
seventy yards off, lying down on the side of a coulie, to escape the
storm. They huddled together a moment to gaze, and, with stiffened
fingers I took a shot, my yellow oilskin slicker flapping around me
in the wind and rain. Down went one buck, and away went the others.
One of my men walked up to the fallen beast, bent over it, and then
asked, “Where did you aim?” Not reassured by the question, I answered
doubtfully, “Behind the shoulder;” whereat he remarked dryly, “Well,
you hit it in the eye!” I never did know whether I killed the antelope
I aimed at or another. Yet that same day I killed three more bucks at
decidedly long shots; at the time we lacked meat at the ranch, and were
out to make a good killing.
Besides their brute and human foes, the prong-horn must also fear the
elements, and especially the snows of winter. On the northern plains
the cold weather is of polar severity, and turns the green, grassy
prairies of midsummer into iron-bound wastes. The blizzards whirl and
sweep across them with a shrieking fury which few living things may
face. The snow is like fine ice dust, and the white waves glide across
the grass with a stealthy, crawling motion which has in it something
sinister and cruel. Accordingly, as the bright fall weather passes, and
the dreary winter draws nigh, when the days shorten, and the nights
seem interminable, and gray storms lower above the gray horizon, the
antelope gather in bands and seek sheltered places, where they may
abide through the winter-time of famine and cold and deep snow. Some of
these bands travel for many hundred miles, going and returning over the
same routes, swimming rivers, crossing prairies, and threading their
way through steep defiles. Such bands make their winter home in places
like the Black Hills, or similar mountainous regions, where the shelter
and feed are good, and where in consequence antelope have wintered in
countless thousands for untold generations. Other bands do not travel
for any very great distance, but seek some sheltered grassy tableland
in the Bad Lands, or some well-shielded valley, where their instinct
and experience teach them that the snow does not lie deep in winter.
Once having chosen such a place they stand much persecution before
leaving it.
One December, an old hunter whom I knew told me that such a band was
wintering a few miles from a camp where two line-riders of the W Bar
brand were stationed; and I made up my mind to ride thither and kill
a couple. The line camp was twenty miles from my ranch; the shack in
which the old hunter lived was midway between, and I had to stop there
to find out the exact lay of the land.
At dawn, before our early breakfast, I saddled a tough, shaggy sorrel
horse; hastening indoors as soon as the job was over, to warm my numbed
fingers. After breakfast I started, muffled in my wolfskin coat,
with beaver-fur cap, gloves, and shaps, and great felt overshoes.
The windless air was bitter cold, the thermometer showing well below
zero. Snow lay on the ground, leaving bare patches here and there,
but drifted deep in the hollows. Under the steel-blue heavens the
atmosphere had a peculiar glint as if filled with myriads of tiny
crystals. As I crossed the frozen river, immediately in front of the
ranch house, the strangely carved tops of the bluffs were reddening
palely in the winter sunrise. Prairie fowl were perched in the bare
cottonwoods along the river brink, showing large in the leafless
branches; they called and clucked to one another.
Where the ground was level and the snow not too deep I loped, and
before noon I reached the sheltered coulie where, with long poles and
bark, the hunter had built his tepee-wigwam, as Eastern woodsmen would
have called it. It stood in a loose grove of elms and box-alders; from
the branches of the nearest trees hung saddles of frozen venison.
The smoke rising from the funnel-shaped top of the tepee showed that
there was more fire than usual within; it is easy to keep a good tepee
warm, though it is so smoky that no one therein can stand upright.
As I drew rein the skin door was pushed aside, and the hard old face
and dried, battered body of the hunter appeared. He greeted me with a
surly nod, and a brief request to “light and hev somethin’ to eat”--the
invariable proffer of hospitality on the plains. He wore a greasy
buckskin shirt or tunic, and an odd cap of badger skin, from beneath
which strayed his tangled hair; age, rheumatism, and the many accidents
and incredible fatigue, hardship, and exposure of his past life had
crippled him, yet he still possessed great power of endurance, and in
his seamed, weather-scarred face his eyes burned fierce and piercing
as a hawk’s. Ever since early manhood he had wandered over the plains,
hunting and trapping; he had waged savage private war against half
the Indian tribes of the north; and he had wedded wives in each of
the tribes of the other half. A few years before this time the great
buffalo herds had vanished, and the once swarming beaver had shared the
same fate; the innumerable horses and horned stock of the cattlemen,
and the daring rough riders of the ranches, had supplanted alike the
game and the red and white wanderers who had followed it with such
fierce rivalry. When the change took place the old fellow, with failing
bodily powers, found his life-work over. He had little taste for the
career of the desperado, horse-thief, highway-man and mankiller, which
not a few of the old buffalo hunters adopted when their legitimate
occupation was gone; he scorned still more the life of vicious and
idle semi-criminality led by others of his former companions who were
of weaker mold. Yet he could not do regular work. His existence had
been one of excitement, adventure, and restless roaming, when it was
not passed in lazy ease; his times of toil and peril varied by fits of
brutal revelry. He had no kin, no ties of any kind. He would accept no
help, for his wants were very few, and he was utterly self-reliant. He
got meat, clothing, and bedding from the antelope and deer he killed;
the spare hides and venison he bartered for what little else he needed.
So he built him his tepee in one of the most secluded parts of the Bad
Lands, where he led the life of a solitary hunter, awaiting in grim
loneliness the death which he knew to be near at hand.
I unsaddled and picketed my horse, and followed the old hunter into his
smoky tepee; sat down on the pile of worn buffalo robes which formed
his bedding, and waited in silence while he fried some deer meat, and
boiled some coffee--he was out of flour. As I ate, he gradually unbent
and talked quite freely, and before I left he told me exactly where
to find the band, which he assured me was located for the winter, and
would not leave unless much harried.
After a couple of hours’ rest I again started, and pushed out to the
end of the Bad Lands. Here, as there had been no wind, I knew I should
find in the snow the tracks of one of the riders from the line camp,
whose beat lay along the edge of the prairie for some eight miles,
until it met the beat of a rider from the line camp next above. As
nightfall came on it grew even colder; long icicles hung from the lips
of my horse; and I shivered slightly in my fur coat. I had reckoned the
distance ill, and it was dusk when I struck the trail; but my horse at
once turned along it of his own accord and began to lope. Half an hour
later I saw through the dark what looked like a spark on the side of a
hill. Toward this my horse turned; and in another moment a whinnying
from in front showed I was near the camp. The light was shining through
a small window, the camp itself being a dugout with a log roof and
front--a kind of frontier building always warm in winter. After turning
my horse into the rough log stable with the horses of the two cowboys,
I joined the latter at supper inside the dugout; being received of
course with hearty cordiality. After the intense cold outside the
warmth within was almost oppressive, for the fire was roaring in the
big stone fireplace. The bunks were broad; my two friends turned into
one, and I was given the other, with plenty of bedding; so that my
sleep was sound.
We had breakfasted and saddled our horses and were off by dawn next
morning. My companions, muffled in furs, started in opposite directions
to ride their lonely beats, while I steered for my hunting-ground. It
was a lowering and gloomy day; at sunrise pale, lurid sundogs hung in
the glimmering mist; gusts of wind moaned through the ravines.
At last I reached a row of bleak hills, and from a ridge looked
cautiously down on the chain of plateaus, where I had been told I
should see the antelope. Sure enough, there they were, to the number
of several hundred, scattered over the level snow-streaked surface of
the nearest and largest plateau, greedily cropping the thick, short
grass. Leaving my horse tied in a hollow I speedily stalked up a coulie
to within a hundred yards of the nearest band and killed a good buck.
Instantly all the antelope in sight ran together into a thick mass
and raced away from me, until they went over the opposite edge of the
plateau; but almost as soon as they did so they were stopped by deep
drifts of powdered snow, and came back to the summit of the tableland.
They then circled round the edge at a gallop, and finally broke madly
by me, jostling one another in their frantic haste, and crossed by a
small ridge into the next plateau beyond: as they went by I shot a
yearling.
I now had all the venison I wished, and would shoot no more, but I was
curious to see how the antelope would act, and so walked after them.
They ran about half a mile, and then the whole herd, of several hundred
individuals, wheeled into line fronting me, like so many cavalry, and
stood motionless, the white and brown bands on their necks looking like
the facings on a uniform. As I walked near they again broke and rushed
to the end of the valley. Evidently they feared to leave the flats
for the broken country beyond, where the rugged hills were riven by
gorges in some of which snow lay deep even thus early in the season.
Accordingly, after galloping a couple of times round the valley, they
once more broke by me, at short range, and tore back along the plateaus
to that on which I had first found them. Their evident and extreme
reluctance to venture into the broken country round about made me
readily understand the tales I had heard of game butchers killing over
a hundred individuals at a time out of a herd so situated.
I walked back to my game, dressed it, and lashed the saddles and hams
behind me on my horse; I had chosen old Sorrel Joe for the trip because
he was strong, tough, and quiet. Then I started for the ranch, keeping
to the prairie as long as I could, because there the going was easier;
sometimes I rode, sometimes I ran on foot, leading Sorrel Joe.
Late in the afternoon, as I rode over a roll in the prairie I saw ahead
of me a sight very unusual at that season; a small emigrant train going
westward. There were three white-topped prairie schooners, containing
the household goods, the tow-headed children, and the hard-faced,
bony women; the tired horses were straining wearily in the traces; the
bearded, moody men walked alongside. They had been belated by sickness,
and the others of their company had gone ahead to take up claims along
the Yellowstone; now they themselves were pushing forward in order
to reach the holdings of their friends before the first deep snows
stopped all travel. They had no time to halt; for there were still two
or three miles to go that evening before they could find a sheltered
resting-place with fuel, grass, and water. A little while after passing
them I turned in the saddle and looked back. The lonely little train
stood out sharply on the sky-line, the wagons looming black against the
cold red west as they toiled steadily onward across the snowy plains.
Night soon fell; but I cared little, for I was on ground I knew. The
old horse threaded his way at a lope along the familiar game trails and
cattle paths; in a couple of hours I caught the gleam from the firelit
windows of the ranch house. No man who, for his good-fortune, has at
times in his life endured toil and hardship, ever fails to appreciate
the strong elemental pleasures of rest after labor, food after hunger,
warmth and shelter after bitter cold.
So much for the winter hunting. But in the fall, when the grass is dry
as tinder, the antelope hunter, like other plainsmen, must sometimes
face fire instead of frost. Fire is one of the most dreaded enemies
of the ranchmen on the cattle ranges; and fighting a big prairie fire
is a work of extraordinary labor, and sometimes of danger. The line of
flame, especially when seen at night, undulating like a serpent, is
very beautiful; though it lacks the terror and grandeur of the great
forest fires.
One October, Ferguson and I, with one of the cow-hands, and a friend
from the East, took the wagon for an antelope hunt in the broken
country between the Little Missouri and the Beaver. The cowboy
drove the wagon to a small spring, near some buttes which are well
distinguished by a number of fossil tree-stumps; while the rest of
us, who were mounted on good horses, made a circle after antelope. We
found none, and rode on to camp, reaching it about the middle of the
afternoon. We had noticed several columns of smoke in the southeast,
showing that prairie fires were under way; but we thought that they
were too far off to endanger our camp, and accordingly unsaddled our
horses and sat down to a dinner of bread, beans, and coffee. Before
we were through the smoke began to pour over a ridge a mile distant
in such quantities that we ran thither with our slickers, hoping to
find some stretch of broken ground where the grass was sparse, and
where we could fight the fire with effect. Our hopes were vain. Before
we reached the ridge the fire came over its crest, and ran down in
a long tongue between two scoria buttes. Here the grass was quite
short and thin, and we did our best to beat out the flames; but they
gradually gained on us, and as they reached the thicker grass lower
down the slope, they began to roar and dart forward in a way that bade
us pay heed to our own safety. Finally they reached a winding line of
brushwood in the bottom of the coulie; and as this burst into a leaping
blaze we saw it was high time to look to the safety of our camp,
and ran back to it at top speed. Ferguson, who had been foremost in
fighting the fire, was already scorched and blackened.
We were camped on the wagon trail which leads along the divide
almost due south to Sentinel Butte. The line of fire was fanned by a
southeasterly breeze, and was therefore advancing diagonally to the
divide. If we could drive the wagon southward on the trail in time to
get it past the fire before the latter reached the divide, we would
be to windward of the flames, and therefore in safety. Accordingly,
while the others were hastily harnessing the team, and tossing the
bedding and provisions into the wagon, I threw the saddle on my horse,
and galloped down the trail, to see if there was yet time to adopt
this expedient. I soon found that there was not. Half a mile from camp
the trail dipped into a deep coulie, where fair-sized trees and dense
undergrowth made a long winding row of brush and timber. The trail led
right under the trees at the upper end of this coulie. As I galloped
by I saw that the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below
me; in the dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, and
roared in a thunderous monotone as it swept up the coulie. I galloped
to the hill ridge ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached the
divide, and turned my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed
under the trees, the fire, running like a race-horse in the brush, had
reached the road; its breath was hot in my face; tongues of quivering
flame leaped over my head and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty
yards away.
When I got back to camp Ferguson had taken measures for the safety of
the wagon. He had moved it across the coulie, which at this point had a
wet bottom, making a bar to the progress of the flames until they had
time to work across lower down. Meanwhile we fought to keep the fire
from entering the well-grassed space on the hither side of the coulie,
between it and a row of scoria buttes. Favored by a streak of clay
ground, where the grass was sparse, we succeeded in beating out the
flame as it reached this clay streak, and again beating it out when it
ran round the buttes and began to back up toward us against the wind.
Then we recrossed the coulie with the wagon, before the fire swept
up the further side; and so, when the flames passed by, they left us
camped on a green oasis in the midst of a charred, smoking desert. We
thus saved some good grazing for our horses.
But our fight with the fire had only begun. No stockman will see a
fire waste the range and destroy the winter feed of the stock without
spending every ounce of his strength in the effort to put a stop to its
ravages--even when, as in our case, the force of men and horses at hand
is so small as to offer only the very slenderest hope of success.
We set about the task in the way customary in the cattle country. It
is impossible for any but a very large force to make head against a
prairie fire while there is any wind; but the wind usually fails after
nightfall, and accordingly the main fight is generally waged during the
hours of darkness.
Before dark we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, and then split its
carcass in two lengthwise with an axe. After sundown the wind lulled;
and we started toward the line of fire, which was working across a row
of broken grassy hills, three-quarters of a mile distant. Two of us
were on horseback, dragging a half carcass, bloody side down, by means
of ropes leading from our saddle-horns to the fore and hind legs; the
other two followed on foot with slickers and wet saddle blankets. There
was a reddish glow in the night air, and the waving, bending lines of
flame showed in great bright curves against the hillside ahead of us.
When we reached them, we found the fire burning in a long, continuous
line. It was not making rapid headway, for the air was still, and the
flames stood upright, two or three feet high. Lengthening the ropes,
one of us spurred his horse across the fire line and then, wheeling,
we dragged the carcass along it; one horseman being on the burnt
ground, and one on the unburnt grass, while the body of the steer lay
lengthwise across the line. The weight and the blood smothered the fire
as we twitched the carcass over the burning grass; and the two men
following behind with their blankets and slickers readily beat out any
isolated tufts of flame.
The fire made the horses wild, and it was not always easy to manage
both them and the ropes, so as to keep the carcass true on the line.
Sometimes there would be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the
grass side of the line ran the risk of a scorching. We were blackened
with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs; while at times the
plunging horses tried to buck or bolt. It was worse when we came to
some deep gully or ravine, breaking the line of fire. Into this we of
course had to plunge, so as to get across to the fire on the other
side. After the glare of the flame the blackness of the ravine was
Stygian; we could see nothing, and simply spurred our horses into it
anywhere, taking our chances. Down we would go, stumbling, sliding,
and pitching, over cut banks and into holes and bushes, while the
carcass bounded behind, now catching on a stump, and now fetching loose
with a “pluck” that brought it full on the horses’ haunches, driving
them nearly crazy with fright. The pull up the opposite bank was, if
anything, worse.
By midnight the half carcass was worn through; but we had stifled the
fire in the comparatively level country to the eastward. Back we went
to camp, drank huge draughts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs,
and dragged out the other half carcass to fight the fire on the west.
But after hours of wearing labor we found ourselves altogether baffled
by the exceeding roughness of the ground. There was some little risk to
us who were on horseback, dragging the carcass; we had to feel our way
along knife-like ridges in the dark, one ahead and the other behind,
while the steer dangled over the precipice on one side; and in going
down the buttes and into the canyons only by extreme care could we
avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down in a heap. Moreover
the fire was in such rough places that the carcass could not be
twitched fairly over it, and so we could not put it out. Before dawn we
were obliged to abandon our fruitless efforts and seek camp, stiffened
and weary. From a hill we looked back through the pitchy night at the
fire we had failed to conquer. It had been broken into many lines by
the roughness of the chasm-strewn and hilly country. Of these lines of
flame some were in advance, some behind, some rushing forward in full
blast and fury, some standing still; here and there one wheeling toward
a flank, or burning in a semicircle, round an isolated hill. Some of
the lines were flickering out; gaps were showing in others. In the
darkness it looked like the rush of a mighty army, bearing triumphantly
onward, in spite of a resistance so stubborn as to break its formation
into many fragments and cause each one of them to wage its own battle
for victory or defeat.
On the wide plains where the prong-buck dwells the hunter must
sometimes face thirst, as well as fire and frost. The only time I ever
really suffered from thirst was while hunting prong-buck.
It was late in the summer. I was with the ranch wagon on the way to
join a round-up, and as we were out of meat I started for a day’s
hunt. Before leaving in the morning I helped to haul the wagon across
the river. It was fortunate I stayed, as it turned out. There was no
regular ford where we made the crossing; we anticipated no trouble,
as the water was very low, the season being dry. However, we struck
a quicksand, in which the wagon settled, while the frightened horses
floundered helplessly. All the riders at once got their ropes on the
wagon, and hauling from the saddle, finally pulled it through. This
took time; and it was ten o’clock when I rode away from the river, at
which my horse and I had just drunk--our last drink for over twenty-four
hours as it turned out.
After two or three hours’ ride, up winding coulies, and through the
scorched desolation of patches of Bad Lands, I reached the rolling
prairie. The heat and drought had long burned the short grass dull
brown; the bottoms of what had been pools were covered with hard, dry,
cracked earth. The day was cloudless, and the heat oppressive. There
were many antelope, but I got only one shot, breaking a buck’s leg; and
though I followed it for a couple of hours I could not overtake it. By
this time it was late in the afternoon, and I was far away from the
river; so I pushed for a creek, in the bed of which I had always found
pools of water, especially toward the head, as is usual with plains
watercourses. To my chagrin, however, they all proved to be dry; and
though I rode up the creek bed toward the head, carefully searching for
any sign of water, night closed on me before I found any. For two or
three hours I stumbled on, leading my horse, in my fruitless search;
then a tumble over a cut bank in the dark warned me that I might as
well stay where I was for the rest of the warm night. Accordingly I
unsaddled the horse, and tied him to a sage brush; after a while he
began to feed on the dewy grass. At first I was too thirsty to sleep.
Finally I fell into slumber, and when I awoke at dawn I felt no thirst.
For an hour or two more I continued my search for water in the creek
bed; then abandoned it and rode straight for the river. By the time we
reached it my thirst had come back with redoubled force, my mouth was
parched, and the horse was in quite as bad a plight; we rushed down
to the brink, and it seemed as if we could neither of us ever drink
our fill of the tepid, rather muddy water. Of course this experience
was merely unpleasant; thirst is not a source of real danger in the
plains country proper, whereas in the hideous deserts that extend from
southern Idaho through Utah and Nevada to Arizona, it ever menaces with
death the hunter and explorer.
In the plains the weather is apt to be in extremes; the heat is
tropical, the cold arctic, and the droughts are relieved by furious
floods. These are generally most severe and lasting in the spring,
after the melting of the snow; and fierce local freshets follow the
occasional cloudbursts. The large rivers then become wholly impassable,
and even the smaller are formidable obstacles. It is not easy to get
cattle across a swollen stream, where the current runs like a turbid
mill-race over the bed of shifting quicksand. Once five of us took
a thousand head of trail steers across the Little Missouri when the
river was up, and it was no light task. The muddy current was boiling
past the banks, covered with driftwood and foul, yellow froth, and the
frightened cattle shrank from entering it. At last, by hard riding,
with much loud shouting and swinging of ropes, we got the leaders
in, and the whole herd followed. After them we went in our turn, the
horses swimming at one moment, and the next staggering and floundering
through the quicksand. I was riding my pet cutting horse, Muley, which
has the provoking habit of making great bounds where the water is just
not deep enough for swimming; once he almost unseated me. Some of the
cattle were caught by the currents and rolled over and over; most of
these we were able, with the help of our ropes, to put on their feet
again; only one was drowned, or rather choked in a quicksand. Many swam
down stream, and in consequence struck a difficult landing, where the
river ran under a cut bank; these we had to haul out with our ropes.
Both men and horses were well tired by the time the whole herd was
across.
Although I have often had a horse down in quicksand, or in crossing
a swollen river, and have had to work hard to save him, I have never
myself lost one under such circumstances. Yet once I saw the horse of
one of my men drown under him directly in front of the ranch house,
while he was trying to cross the river. This was in early spring, soon
after the ice had broken.
When making long wagon trips over the great plains, antelope often
offer the only source of meat supply, save for occasional water fowl,
sage fowl, and prairie fowl--the sharp-tailed prairie fowl, be it
understood. This is the characteristic grouse of the cattle country;
the true prairie fowl is a bird of the farming land further east.
Toward the end of the summer of ’92 I found it necessary to travel from
my ranch to the Black Hills, some two hundred miles south. The ranch
wagon went with me, driven by an all-round plainsman, a man of iron
nerves and varied past, the sheriff of our county. He was an old friend
of mine; at one time I had served as deputy-sheriff for the northern
end of the county. In the wagon we carried our food and camp kit, and
our three rolls of bedding, each wrapped in a thick, nearly waterproof
canvas sheet; we had a tent, but we never needed it. The load being
light, the wagon was drawn by but a span of horses, a pair of wild
runaways, tough, and good travelers. My foreman and I rode beside the
wagon on our wiry, unkempt, unshod cattle-ponies. They carried us
all day at a rack, pace, single-foot, or slow lope, varied by rapid
galloping when we made long circles after game; the trot, the favorite
gait with Eastern park-riders, is disliked by all peoples who have to
do much of their life-work in the saddle.
The first day’s ride was not attractive. The heat was intense and the
dust stifling, as we had to drive some loose horses for the first few
miles, and afterward to ride up and down the sandy river bed, where
the cattle had gathered, to look over some young steers we had put on
the range the preceding spring. When we did camp it was by a pool of
stagnant water, in a creek bottom, and the mosquitoes were a torment.
Nevertheless, as evening fell, it was pleasant to climb a little knoll
nearby and gaze at the rows of strangely colored buttes, grass-clad,
or of bare earth and scoria, their soft reds and purples showing as
through a haze, and their irregular outlines gradually losing their
sharpness in the fading twilight.
Next morning the weather changed, growing cooler, and we left the
tangle of ravines and Bad Lands, striking out across the vast sea-like
prairies. Hour after hour, under the bright sun, the wagon drew slowly
ahead, over the immense rolling stretches of short grass, dipping down
each long slope until it reached the dry, imperfectly outlined creek
bed at the bottom,--wholly devoid of water and without so much as a
shrub of wood,--and then ascending the gentle rise on the other side
until at last it topped the broad divide, or watershed, beyond which
lay the shallow winding coulies of another creek system. From each
rise of ground we looked far and wide over the sunlit prairie, with
its interminable undulations. The sicklebill curlews, which in spring,
while breeding, hover above the traveling horseman with ceaseless
clamor, had for the most part gone southward. We saw only one small
party of half a dozen birds; they paid little heed to us, but piped
to one another, making short flights, and on alighting stood erect,
first spreading and then folding and setting their wings with a
slow, graceful motion. Little horned larks continually ran along the
ruts of the faint wagon track, just ahead of the team, and twittered
plaintively as they rose, while flocks of long-spurs swept hither and
thither, in fitful, irregular flight.
My foreman and I usually rode far off to one side of the wagon, looking
out for antelope. Of these we at first saw few, but they grew more
plentiful as we journeyed onward, approaching a big, scantily wooded
creek, where I had found the prong-horn abundant in previous seasons.
They were very wary and watchful whether going singly or in small
parties, and the lay of the land made it exceedingly difficult to get
within range. The last time I had hunted in this neighborhood was in
the fall, at the height of the rutting season. Prong-bucks, even more
than other game, seem fairly maddened by erotic excitement. At the
time of my former hunt they were in ceaseless motion; each master buck
being incessantly occupied in herding his harem, and fighting would-be
rivals, while single bucks chased single does as greyhounds chase
hares, or else, if no does were in sight, from sheer excitement ran
to and fro as if crazy, racing at full speed in one direction, then
halting, wheeling, and tearing back again just as hard as they could go.
At this time, however, the rut was still some weeks off, and all the
bucks had to do was to feed and keep a lookout for enemies. Try my
best, I could not get within less than four or five hundred yards, and
though I took a number of shots at these, or at even longer distances,
I missed. If a man is out merely for a day’s hunt, and has all the time
he wishes, he will not scare the game and waste cartridges by shooting
at such long ranges, preferring to spend half a day or more in patient
waiting and careful stalking; but if he is traveling, and is therefore
cramped for time, he must take his chances, even at the cost of burning
a good deal of powder.
I was finally helped to success by a characteristic freak of the game
I was following. No other animals are as keen-sighted, or are normally
as wary as prong-horns; but no others are so whimsical and odd in their
behavior at times, or so subject to fits of the most stupid curiosity
and panic. Late in the afternoon, on topping a rise I saw two good
bucks racing off about three hundred yards to one side; I sprang to
the ground, and fired three shots at them in vain, as they ran like
quarter horses until they disappeared over a slight swell. In a minute,
however, back they came, suddenly appearing over the crest of the
same swell, immediately in front of me, and, as I afterward found by
pacing, some three hundred and thirty yards away. They stood side by
side facing me, and remained motionless, unheeding the crack of the
Winchester; I aimed at the right-hand one, but a front shot of the
kind, at such a distance, is rather difficult, and it was not until I
fired for the fourth time that he sank back out of sight. I could not
tell whether I had killed him, and took two shots at his mate, as the
latter went off, but without effect. Running forward, I found the first
one dead, the bullet having gone through him lengthwise; the other did
not seem satisfied even yet, and kept hanging round in the distance for
some minutes, looking at us.
I had thus bagged one prong-buck, as the net outcome of the expenditure
of fourteen cartridges. This was certainly not good shooting; but
neither was it as bad as it would seem to the man inexperienced in
antelope hunting. When fresh meat is urgently needed, and when time
is too short, the hunter who is after antelope in an open, flattish
country must risk many long shots. In no other kind of hunting is there
so much long-distance shooting, or so many shots fired for every head
of game bagged.
Throwing the buck into the wagon, we continued our journey across the
prairie, no longer following any road, and before sunset jolted down
toward the big creek for which we had been heading. There were many
water-holes therein, and timber of considerable size; box-alder and
ash grew here and there in clumps and fringes, beside the serpentine
curves of the nearly dry torrent bed, the growth being thickest under
the shelter of the occasional low bluffs. We drove down to a heavily
grassed bottom, near a deep, narrow pool, with, at one end, that rarest
of luxuries in the plains country, a bubbling spring of pure, cold
water. With plenty of wood, delicious water, ample feed for the horses,
and fresh meat we had every comfort and luxury incident to camp life
in good weather. The bedding was tossed out on a smooth spot beside
the wagon; the horses were watered and tethered to picket pins where
the feed was best; water was fetched from the spring; a deep hole was
dug for the fire, and the grass round about carefully burned off; and
in a few moments the bread was baking in the Dutch oven, the potatoes
were boiling, antelope steaks were sizzling in the frying-pan, and
the kettle was ready for the tea. After supper, eaten with the relish
known well to every hard-working and successful hunter, we sat for half
an hour or so round the fire, and then turned in under the blankets,
pulled the tarpaulins over us, and listened drowsily to the wailing of
the coyotes until we fell sound asleep.
We determined to stay in this camp all day, so as to try and kill
another prong-buck, as we would soon be past the good hunting grounds.
I did not have to go far for my game next morning, for soon after
breakfast, while sitting on my canvas bag cleaning my rifle, the
sheriff suddenly called to me that a bunch of antelope were coming
toward us. Sure enough there they were, four in number, rather over
half a mile off, on the first bench of the prairie, two or three
hundred yards back from the creek, leisurely feeding in our direction.
In a minute or two they were out of sight, and I instantly ran along
the creek toward them for a quarter of a mile, and then crawled up a
short shallow coulie, close to the head of which they seemed likely
to pass. When nearly at the end I cautiously raised my hatless head,
peered through some straggling weeds, and at once saw the horns of the
buck. He was a big fellow, about a hundred and twenty yards off; the
others, a doe and two kids, were in front. As I lifted myself on my
elbows he halted and turned his raised head toward me; the sunlight
shone bright on his supple, vigorous body with its markings of sharply
contrasted brown and white. I pulled trigger, and away he went; but I
could see that his race was nearly run, and he fell after going a few
hundred yards.
Soon after this a wind storm blew up so violent that we could hardly
face it. In the late afternoon it died away, and I again walked out to
hunt, but saw only does and kids, at which I would not shoot. As the
sun set, leaving bars of amber and pale red in the western sky, the air
became absolutely calm. In the waning evening the low, far-off ridges
were touched with a violet light; then the hues grew sombre, and still
darkness fell on the lonely prairie.
Next morning we drove to the river, and kept near it for several
days, most of the time following the tracks made by the heavy wagons
accompanying the trail herds--this being one of the regular routes
followed by the great throng of slow-moving cattle yearly driven
from the south. At other times we made our own road. Twice or thrice
we passed ranch houses; the men being absent on the round-up, they
were shut, save one which was inhabited by two or three lean Texan
cow-punchers, with sun-burned faces and reckless eyes, who had come up
with a trail herd from the Cherokee strip. Once, near the old Sioux
crossing, where the Dakota war bands used to ford the river on their
forays against the Crows and the settlers along the Yellowstone, we met
a large horse herd. The tough, shabby, tired-looking animals, one or
two of which were loaded with bedding and a scanty supply of food, were
driven by three travel-worn, hard-faced men, with broad hats, shaps,
and long pistols in their belts. They had brought the herd over plain
and mountain pass all the way from far distant Oregon.
It was a wild, rough country, bare of trees save for a fringe of
cottonwoods along the river, and occasional clumps of cedar on the
jagged, brown buttes; as we went further the hills turned the color of
chalk, and were covered with a growth of pine. We came upon acres of
sunflowers as we journeyed southward; they are not as tall as they are
in the rich bottom lands of Kansas, where the splendid blossoms, on
their strong stalks, stand as high as the head of a man on horseback.
Though there were many cattle here, big game was scarce. However, I
killed plenty of prairie chickens and sage hens for the pot; and as the
sage hens were still feeding largely on crickets and grasshoppers, and
not exclusively on sage, they were just as good eating as the prairie
chickens. I used the rifle, cutting off their heads or necks, and, as
they had to be shot on the ground, and often while in motion, or else
while some distance away, it was more difficult than shooting off the
heads of grouse in the mountains, where the birds sit motionless in
trees. The head is a small mark, while to hit the body is usually to
spoil the bird; so I found that I averaged three or four cartridges for
every head neatly taken off, the remaining shots representing spoiled
birds and misses.
For the last sixty or seventy miles of our trip we left the river and
struck off across a great, desolate gumbo prairie. There was no game,
no wood for fuel, and the rare water-holes were far apart, so that we
were glad when, as we toiled across the monotonous succession of long,
swelling ridges, the dim, cloud-like mass, looming vague and purple on
the rim of the horizon ahead of us, gradually darkened and hardened
into the bold outline of the Black Hills.