"In past years in England, and in New York, I have done some shooting with a pistol at a target, but of course I have never shot at game; and I fancy that to shoot at game is very different from shooting at a target, in a quiet place with all the lights arranged just so."
"Yes," laughed Jack, "I should think it would be; but if you know how to shoot a pistol, you'll have to do your best to kill the game. I tell you, if we come in to-night without anything, I shall lay it up against you."
"I'll do what I can," Donald promised, "if you will take me up close enough to get a fair shot. You see in the shooting-galleries the distances are short, scarcely ever over twenty yards; and what is more, the people there shoot with special pistols, and often with special ammunition. So if I flunk on killing game, you can see I will have plenty of excuses. Besides that, I don't know anything about this pistol—it's a new one I've just bought, and I can't tell anything about how it's going to shoot."
The hills which bordered the valley on either side were low, but rough, rocky ledges often thrust themselves out to the valley's edge, and from these ledges great pink or reddish rocks, occasionally worn into queer shapes, had fallen. Sometimes around such a great rock was a little tangle of underbrush—cherry, currant and raspberries—while sometimes there was no brush and the yellow grass grew close about the rocks. It was up here on the higher land that Jack hoped to find antelope lying down, and, under cover of rocks and brush and the inequalities of the ground, to be able to get close enough to kill one with a pistol.
As they rode on, it became clear that Hugh had sent them to a good hunting place for antelope. Groups of these animals, or sometimes old bucks feeding singly, could be seen every few hundred yards for a long distance ahead. Some of the bucks seemed to carry extraordinarily large horns, which would make fine trophies to hang on the wall, and both Jack and Donald regretted that they did not have their rifles.
Donald, whose experience in hunting was much less than Jack's, was anxious to try to approach the first bunch of antelope they saw; but Jack pointed out to him that this could not be done, because there was little or no cover. He explained further that if they started the antelope running along this valley, they would put every animal there on the alert, and their hunting later in the day would be just so much the more difficult.
"If we ride along close to the rocks here," he said, "the antelope will pay little attention to us. Some of them will stand and look, and perhaps walk off a little way, but when they see us go on about our business they will begin to feed again. Along toward the middle of the day, if we keep our eyes well open, we are pretty sure to find some of these big bucks lying down close to the hills, and then we'll give you a chance to see what you can do with your six-shooter."
"All right," agreed Donald; "all right; you're the hunter, and I am perfectly willing to follow along behind and do what you tell me to."
"Oh, it's not that. But I've had more experience than you, and I know better than you what animals will do under certain circumstances. Why," Jack laughed, "don't I remember the first antelope I ever killed! How crazy I was to get up to it, and how I fell down two or three times on the way to the top of the hill, and how I finally scared the antelope out of the country! I believe that was one of the best lessons in hunting I ever learned. I made such a complete fool of myself, that I even saw it myself, and it humbled me and made me ask Hugh to put me on the right road, and to keep me traveling there."