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He nearly touched it with his nose, but failed to secure the coveted prize, and fell headlong into the fire. We fired two shots into him, and he lay still until one of the Indians pulled him out to keep his hair from burning and making a disagreeable smell. In about five minutes, another wolf leaped at our elk-meat and fell in the fire.
At the suggestion of the Indians I brought forward my revolvers, and we all sat down to watch the varmints, and see what they would do. In a few minutes, a pair of fiery, red eyes looked down at us from the snowbank; then another, and another pair, until there were a dozen. We sat perfectly still, and presently one great gray wolf gathered himself, and made a leap for the elk-meat on the saddle.
He was a tall man, about six feet three inches in his moccasins, with reddish gray hair and whiskers, very thin, nothing but bone, sinew, and muscle. He was riding an old cayuse pony, with an old saddle, a very old bridle, and a pair of elk-skin hobbles attached to his saddle, to which also hung a piece of elk-meat. He carried an old Hawkins rifle.
Not quite so savage is this frontier, indeed, as the wild precincts described by the Nebraska editor, whose meditations for a leader used to be cut short, occasionally, by the bellowing of the shaggy bison at his window, or the incursion of the redoubtable "grizzly" into his wood-shed where the elk-meat hung.
At times, it seemed as though there were five hundred of them, and joining their voices in chorus they would send up a volume of sound that resembled the roar of a tempest, or the discordant singing of a vast multitude of people. While we cooked breakfast, a strong picket of wolves watched all around the camp, feasting their greedy eyes from a distance on my elk-meat.
He was a large `gobbler' over twenty pounds in weight and, I need not tell you, proved far more delicious eating than his tame cousins of the farm-yard. "At the end of the third day, the elk-meat was as dry as a chip; and taking it from the lines we packed it in small bundles, and placed it in our wagon.
Before the sun had set, nearly a thousand pounds of fresh elk-meat were dangling from the trees around our little encampment. We had purposely delayed eating until our work should be done; and while Cudjo and I were engaged in hanging up the huge quarters, Mary had been busy with the gridiron, and an elk rump-steak quite equal to the best beef added to the excellence of our supper."
It was our intention to cure the venison not by `jerking, as we had done the elk-meat, but with the salt, which we were about to make on the morrow. For this purpose, we should require a large vessel capable of holding the pickle. We had nothing of the sort; and, of course, we were puzzled for a while as to how we should manage without it.
Then an old man crept in stealthily, on all-fours, and, stealing up to him, put his mouth to the flesh, here and there, apparently sucking out the disease. Hunter stopped to rest to-day on our door-steps. He had a haunch of elk-meat on his back, one end resting on his head, with a cushion of green fern-leaves.
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