footing. I think the President was the
most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite
forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them.

In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise
of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see
some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all
were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do,
however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing,
and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks.
Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and
crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead.

The next day, while the rest of us went fishing for trout in the
Yellowstone, three or four miles above the camp, over the roughest
trail that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never
fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch
in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to
feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do
this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge
and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the
sheep, and was back in camp before we were.

We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the
yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a
black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged,
mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at
once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very
singular spectacle.

[Illustration: MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME.

By kind permission of Forest and Stream.]

We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the
third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at
Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old
frontiersman, who died a few weeks later.

While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the
tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened
to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what
a varied and picturesque stream!--anecdote, history, science,
politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman,
hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, civil service commissioner, police
commissioner, governor, president,--the frankest confession