in with four elk, so that we were well supplied. Of these
various meats the deer proved the best, the mountain-sheep the poorest.
The minimum of the night temperature was 34 deg. Fahrenheit. At eighty-five
hundred feet above tide the change at sundown was abrupt. Our camp-fires
had filled the little valley with smoke, and through it the moon rose
red and sombre above the pine-clad outlines of the eastward hills.

The next day Mr. E. and I, who liked to break the journey by a walk,
started early, and, following a clear trail, soon passed the mules. We
left Pelican Creek on our right, and crossed a low divide into a
cooly,[B] the valley of Broad Creek: a second divide separated this from
Canyon Creek, both of which enter the Yellowstone below the falls.

After some six miles afoot over grassy rolling plains and bits of wood,
the command overtook us, and, mounting, we followed the major for an
hour or two through bogs and streams, where now and then down went a
horse and over went a trooper, or some one or two held back at a nasty
crossing until the major smiled a little viciously, when the unlucky
ones plunged in and got through or not as might chance.

About twelve some of us held up to lunch, the train and escort passing
us. We followed them soon through dense woods, and at last up a small
brook in a deep ravine among boulders big and small. At last we lost the
trail at the foot of a slope one thousand feet high of loose stones and
earth, from the top of which a cry hailed us, and we saw that somehow
the command had got up. The ascent was very steep, but before we made it
a mule rolled down. As he was laden with fresh antelope and deer meat,
the scattering of the yet red joints as he fell made it look as if the
poor beast had been torn limb from limb; but, as a packer remarked,
"Mules has got an all-fired lot of livin' in 'em;" and the mule was
repacked and started up again. "They jist falls to make yer mad,
anyway," added the friendly biographer of the mule.

The sheer mountain-side above us was not to be tried mounted; so afoot,
bridle in hand, we started up, pulling the horses after us. I had not
thought it could be as hard work as it proved. There was a singular and
unfeeling lack of intelligence in the fashion the horse had of differing
with his leader. When the man was well blown and stopped, the horse was
sure to be on his heels, or if the man desired to move the horse had his
own opinion and proved restive. A