he buck, shaking himself like a dog, stood against the yellow
sandstone at the mouth of the gulch. He saw me, looked back at the
drifting boat, and appeared to be undecided.

I wondered what the range might be. Back home in the plowed field where
I frequently plug tin cans at various long ranges, I would have called
it six hundred yards--at first. Then suddenly it seemed three or four
hundred. Like a thing in a dream the buck seemed to waver back and forth
in the oily sunlight.

"Call it four hundred and fifty," I said to myself, and let drive. A
spurt of yellow stone-dust leaped from the cliff a foot or so above the
deer's back. Only four hundred? But the deer had made up his mind. He
had urgent business on the other side of that slope--he appeared to be
overdue.

[Illustration: FRESH MEAT.]

[Illustration: SUPPER!]

I pumped up another shell and drew fine at four hundred. That time
his rump quivered for a second as though a great weight had been dropped
on it. But he went on with increased speed. Once more I let him have it.
That time he lost an antler. He had now reached the summit, two hundred
feet up at the least.

He hesitated--seemed to be shivering. I have hunted with a full stomach
and brought down game. But there's a difference when you are empty. In
that moment before you kill, you became the sort of fellow your mother
wouldn't like. Perhaps the average man would feel a little ashamed to
tell the truth about that savage moment. I got down on my knee and put a
final soft-nosed ball where it would do the most good. The buck reared,
stiffened, and came down, tumbling over and over.

That night we pitched camp under a lone scrubby tree at the mouth of an
arid gulch that led back into the utterly God-forsaken Bad Lands. It was
the wilderness indeed. Coyotes howled far away in the night, and diving
beaver boomed out in the black stream.

We built half a dozen fires and swung above them the choice portions of
our kill. And how we ate--with what glorious appetites!

It is good to sit with a glad-hearted company flinging words of joyful
banter across very tall steins. It is good to draw up to a country table
at Christmas time with turkey and pumpkin-pies and old-fashioned
puddings before you, and the ones you love about you. I have been deeply
happy with apples and cider before an open fireplace. I have been
present when the brilliant sword-play of wit flashed across a banquet
table--and it thrilled me. _Bu