Jack the Young Cowboy: An Eastern Boy's Experiance on a Western Round-up

by George Bird Grinnell

At last Jack dismounted at a little grove of pine timber, at the foot of a rocky hill, steep and broken.

"Let's stop here," he said, "and climb up to the top of this hill and see what there is to look at. When we get up there, Donald can soothe his feelings with the British pipe he carries and the rest of us will study the landscape."

The horses were tied, and a short scramble brought the men to the sharp peak of the hill—a rocky needle standing up several hundred feet above the plateau. From this summit was had a wide view which really justified Jack. To the south and east they looked out over the basin where the ranch was, though the distance was so great that there was no detail. Behind them, to the north and west, was a stretch of plateau broken by groves and lines of pines and aspens, and in the little parks among this timber were a number of animals, most of them elk, though there were some antelope. On the plateau between the basin from which they had come and the pinnacle on which they stood, in many little parks and openings were elk and in one of the larger parks a herd of antelope.

"Why," exclaimed Jack Mason, "this is a regular elk pasture! It seems to me the elk are thicker here than the cattle on the prairie, where we passed along only a few days ago."

"Well," replied Jack, "there are a great many elk up here, and very few people come here to hunt them. A few of the ranch people round about, when they need fresh meat, come here and kill it, and that is all the hunting that is done here. But I'm afraid the place is getting talked about. I heard last year of three or four settlers from down in Colorado who came up to the Hole, where most of the elk winter, and loaded up their wagons with their winter's meat. If three or four people from Colorado did that last year, it's likely that a dozen or twenty will do it this year, and two or three times that number the year after. If they do that, that will be the end of the elk here; and I guess they'll do it."

The boys sat there for an hour or two looking over this lovely mountain prospect, and then Jack Danvers stood up.

"Well, I really hate to do it," he said, "but I suppose we've got to go down and kill something, and take it back to the ranch."

They climbed down the steep hill and untied their horses.

"Now," Jack cautioned the boys, "we ought to go more carefully. Donald, I expect you'd like to kill an elk, wouldn't you?"