would be to make boast that no one who has had a similar experience
would believe.

Fortunately, not far behind me was the hollow or gully already
mentioned and I bolted over the edge of it. As soon as the bank
concealed my person I ran as I never ran before taking a course at right
angles to my original one and leeward of the herd, and at last, out of
breath, I rolled over in the weeds and lay there panting and straining
my ears to hear the snorting beasts.

My chest felt dry, hot and oppressed from forced and labored breathing,
and had the buffalo discovered me I do not think I could have run
another step. But the big brutes halted at the edge of the bank and
seeing no one in sight walked around pawing and throwing up great clouds
of dust and in their rage apparently daring me to come forth. Like a
small boy when he hears a challenge from a gang of toughs, I decided
that I did not want to fight and lay as quiet as possible among the
sunflowers until I had regained my breath. When the buffalo wandered
back to their original pasture land I, like a coyote, slunk away and
consoled myself with the thought that although I had had my run for my
money, at least, I had seen the death of the antelope even if I did miss
again seeing the Wild Hunter "collar his game," as Big Pete would have
called the act of securing it. Besides this I had a real exciting
adventure with good red-blooded American animals and learned the lesson
that large horned beasts which have not been taught to fear man are
exceedingly dangerous to man.

CHAPTER VIII

Rising abruptly from the prairie was a frowning precipice a thousand or
more feet high and above and beyond the top of this cliff, the
mountains.

When Big Pete told me that his park was "walled in" he told me the
mildest sort of truth; the prairie is the bottom of a wide canyon, in
fact everything seems to indicate that the whole park had settled,
sunk--"taken a drop" of a thousand or more feet; forming what miners
would call a fault.

From the glaciers up among the clouds numerous streams of melted ice
came dashing down the sides of the mountain range, fanciful cascades
leaping without fear from most stupendous heights spreading out in long
horse-tail falls over the face of the cliff, doing everything but
looking real. At the foot of each of the falls there was a pool of deep
water, in one or two instances the pools were smooth basins hollowed out
of solid rock in which the water