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Often in midwinter will come, now and then, a long fall of soft snow piling three or four feet above the ice crust, and work a real hardship for the dwellers of these streets. When such a storm portends the weather-wise black-tail will go down across the valley and up to the pastures of Waban where no more snow falls than suffices to nourish the sparsely growing pines.
As I'm comin' back to camp I'm strollin' down a draw at the time where thar's no trees nor nothin' thar emanates a black-tail buck from over among the bushes on the hill, an' starts to headin' my way a whole lot. His horns is jest gettin' over bein' velvet, an' he's feelin' plenty good an' sassy.
Black-tail deer were very plentiful; these were about the size of an ordinary fallow-deer, and they were extremely fat and delicious venison; but their horns were still in velvet, and would not be clean until October. I could have shot several of these animals; but I was full of good resolutions to resist all temptation, and to restrict my shooting to the long-sought bear.
"Yes, 2 1/2 dollars, or 2 dollars at least I'll get for that skin; you see there's no game that pays us like the black-tail, and I never let one go if I can help it; they're easy to shoot, easy to skin, easy to dry, and easy to sell at a good price, and more than that, they're handy to pack upon a mule."
Till yesterday a Crow Indian war-bonnet had hung next it, a sumptuous cascade of feathers; on the other side a bow with arrows had dangled; opposite had been the skin of a silver fox; over the door had spread the antlers of a black-tail deer; a bearskin stretched beneath it.
On the following evening his expedition was interfered with by the fact that earlier in the day Kiddie had stalked and killed a black-tail deer and needed Rube's help in carrying the carcass into camp and cutting it up for venison. But Rube was not to be denied a sight of the eagles, even if he could not hope to capture an eaglet and take it home with him as a pet.
At that little log hotel of ten or twelve rooms there were seven kinds of meat black-tail deer, white-tail deer, bear, grouse, prairie chicken, squirrels, and domestic fowl the latter still in possession of their heads.
This was Bob's pretty mare, loaded, and most carefully packed with the trophies of his day's sport, as a solitary hunter, quite alone and unaided since 8 A.M. His pony carried the skins of three bears and four black-tail deer, which he had shot, skinned, and packed upon his sturdy little companion.
The buffalo down in the valleys, the antelope on the plains, the gazelle along the streams, and the elk, black-tail and big horn on the mountains, the mountain grouse, and the streams filled with trout, camas root for bread, cherries, raspberries, and strawberries, made a Garden of Eden for these people until a thousand years had passed, and the tribes increased to twenty-eight before the onward march of the Sioux across and beyond the Mississippi and Missouri brought them into the Sheep Eaters' country.
The chances for the wapiti and elk and the western mule and black-tail deer are brighter, provided that we move promptly for their protection. The pronghorn is a wonderfully clever and adaptive animal, crawling under barb-wire fences, and thus avoiding one of the greatest enemies of Western life.
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