ld fire, he was gone among
the rocks. Soon I heard a rustling sound, with a cracking of twigs at
a little distance, and saw moving above the tall bushes the branching
antlers of an elk. I was in the midst of a hunter's paradise.

Such are the Black Hills, as I found them in July; but they wear a
different garb when winter sets in, when the broad boughs of the fir
tree are bent to the ground by the load of snow, and the dark mountains
are whitened with it. At that season the mountain-trappers, returned
from their autumn expeditions, often build their rude cabins in the
midst of these solitudes, and live in abundance and luxury on the game
that harbors there. I have heard them relate, how with their tawny
mistresses, and perhaps a few young Indian companions, they have spent
months in total seclusion. They would dig pitfalls, and set traps for
the white wolves, the sables, and the martens, and though through the
whole night the awful chorus of the wolves would resound from the frozen
mountains around them, yet within their massive walls of logs they would
lie in careless ease and comfort before the blazing fire, and in the
morning shoot the elk and the deer from their very door.

CHAPTER XVIII

A MOUNTAIN HUNT

The camp was full of the newly-cut lodge-poles; some, already prepared,
were stacked together, white and glistening, to dry and harden in the
sun; others were lying on the ground, and the squaws, the boys, and even
some of the warriors were busily at work peeling off the bark and paring
them with their knives to the proper dimensions. Most of the hides
obtained at the last camp were dressed and scraped thin enough for use,
and many of the squaws were engaged in fitting them together and
sewing them with sinews, to form the coverings for the lodges. Men were
wandering among the bushes that lined the brook along the margin of the
camp, cutting sticks of red willow, or shongsasha, the bark of which,
mixed with tobacco, they use for smoking. Reynal's squaw was hard
at work with her awl and buffalo sinews upon her lodge, while her
proprietor, having just finished an enormous breakfast of meat, was
smoking a social pipe along with Raymond and myself. He proposed at
length that we should go out on a hunt. "Go to the Big Crow's lodge,"
said he, "and get your rifle. I'll bet the gray Wyandotte pony against
your mare that we start an elk or a black-tailed deer, or likely as not,
a bighorn, before we are two miles o