kit, with a couple of spare pairs of socks and some handkerchiefs.  A frying-pan, some salt pork, and a hatchet, made up a light pack, which, with the bedding, I fastened across the stock saddle by means of a rope and a spare packing cinch.  My cartridges and knife were in my belt; my compass and matches, as always, in my pocket.  I walked, while the little mare followed almost like a dog, often without my having to hold the lariat which served as halter.

The country was for the most part fairly open, as I kept near the foot-hills where glades and little prairies broke the pine forest.  The trees were of small size.  There was no regular trail, but the course was easy to keep, and I had no trouble of any kind save on the second day.  That afternoon I was following a stream which at last “canyoned up,” that is sank to the bottom of a canyon-like ravine impossible for a horse.  I started up a side valley, intending to cross from its head coulies to those of another valley which would lead in below the canyon.

However, I got enmeshed in the tangle of winding valleys at the foot of the steep mountains, and as dusk was coming on I halted and camped in a little open spot by the side of a small, noisy brook, with crystal water.  The place was carpeted with soft, wet, green moss, dotted red with the kinnikinnic berries, and at its edge, under the trees where the ground was dry, I threw down the buffalo bed on a mat of sweet-smelling pine needles.  Making camp took but a moment.  I opened the pack, tossed the bedding on a smooth spot, knee-haltered the little mare, dragged up a few dry logs, and then strolled off, rifle on shoulder, through the frosty gloaming, to see if I could pick up a grouse for supper.

For half a mile I walked quickly and silently over the pine needles, across a succession of slight ridges separated by narrow, shallow valleys.  The forest here was composed of lodge-pole pines, which on the ridges grew close together, with tall slender trunks, while in the valleys the growth was more open.  Though the sun was behind the mountains there was yet plenty of light by which to shoot, but it was fading rapidly.

At last, as I was thinking of turning towards camp, I stole up to the crest of one of the ridges, and looked over into the valley some sixty yards off.  Immediately I caught the loom of some large, dark object; and another glance showed me a big grisly walking slowly off with his head down.  He was quartering to me, and I fired into his flank, the bullet, as I afterwards found, ranging forward and piercing one lung.  At the shot he uttered a loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off.  After going a few hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket, some thirty yards broad, and two or three times as long which he did not leave.  I ran up to the edge and there halted, not liking to venture into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems and