the sundown gun was fired a couple of
hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their
feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown
bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way.

The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in
the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even
the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were
left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was
evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,--a hunger that seems
to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth
on his hunting trips for big game in the West.

We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp
days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three
camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the
northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner
River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on
horseback.

The second week we visited the geyser region, which lies a thousand
feet or more higher, and where the snow was still five or six feet
deep. This part of the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by
two span of horses.

On the horseback excursion, which involved only about fifty miles of
riding, we had a mule pack train, and Sibley tents and stoves, with
quite a retinue of camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two,
and a guide, Billy Hofer.

The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque gorge on the
Yellowstone, about ten miles from the fort. A slight indisposition,
the result of luxurious living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no
hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till
the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a
buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three
soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him
confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail
toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain
Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years,
and I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during my youth.
That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful animal beneath you, at
whose mercy you are,--you, a pedestrian all your days,--with gullies
and rocks and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close beside