ny other which
we killed during the entire trip.

Kublai Khan looked at the dead animal and arched his neck, as much
as to say, "Yes, I ran him down. He had to quit when I really got
started." My wife held the pony's head, while I hoisted the antelope
to his back and strapped it behind the saddle. He watched the
proceedings interestedly but without a tremor, and even when I
mounted, he paid not the slightest attention to the head dangling on
his flanks. Thereby he showed that he was a very exceptional pony.
In the weeks which followed he proved it a hundred times, and I came
to love him as I have never loved another animal.

Yvette and I trotted slowly back to camp, thrilled with the
excitement of the wild ride. We began to realize that we were lucky
to have escaped without broken necks. The race taught us never again
to attempt to guide our ponies away from the marmot holes which
spotted the plains, for the horses could see them better than we
could and all their lives had known that they meant death.

That morning was our initiation into what is the finest sport we
have ever known. Hunting from a motor car is undeniably exciting at
first, but a real sportsman can never care for it very long. The
antelope does not have a chance against gas and steel and a
long-range rifle. On horseback the conditions are reversed. An
antelope can run twice as fast as the best horse living. It can see as
far as a man with prism binoculars. All the odds are in the animal's
favor except two--its fatal desire to run in a circle about the
pursuer, and the use of a high-power rifle. But even then an antelope
three hundred yards away, going at a speed of fifty miles an hour, is
not an easy target.

Of course, the majority of sportsmen will say that it cannot be done
with any certainty--until they go to Mongolia and do it themselves!
But, as I remarked in a previous chapter, conditions on the plains
are so unusual that shooting in other parts of the world is no
criterion. After one gets the range of an animal which, like the
antelope, has a smooth, even run, it is not so difficult to hit as
one might imagine. Practice is the great essential. At the beginning
I averaged one antelope to every eight cartridges, but later my
score was one to three.

We spent the afternoon at the new camp, setting traps and preparing
for the days to come--days in which we knew, from long experience,
we would have every waking moment full of work. The nights