To prepare the elk's carcass for transportation to camp and to load the greater part of it on the pack horse took only a little time, and the boys went on toward home.
Jack congratulated Donald on the shot.
"It was a good one," he said, "and I believe you're an older hunter than I thought. The way you killed that antelope the other day, and this elk, makes me think that you've done a lot of hunting. Of course, I'm not much of a believer in this buck-fever that you read about in the books, but it certainly is true that when pilgrims are shooting at game for the first time, they don't always keep their heads. I reckon, though, that you've hunted more than I supposed, and I believe that you can shoot all right, and maybe can beat some of us out here who think we can shoot pretty steadily."
[CHAPTER XXIV]
FLAGGING AN ANTELOPE
The days passed pleasantly and swiftly. It was not the season for killing game, and except when fresh meat was required no hunting was done. Nevertheless, there was work enough. Every day one man rode off and made a long round of the basin looking carefully for the tracks of cattle leading away from it. If fresh tracks were seen, the cattle were followed, rounded up, and driven back to the home range.
The work on a ranch is never ended. The irrigating ditches had to be looked after and the water from time to time turned on or off the hay-fields or the garden-patch. Haying time would come before long, and in that country hay was money, and worth more than a cent a pound. When no work was pressing, Jack Danvers and Donald got on their horses and rode down to the lake, and perhaps lay there on a little knoll and with their glasses watched the young ducks swimming on the lake, or the young plover, sandpipers and curlews that fed along its borders. The first two or three times the boys went down there, all the young birds hid, and the old ones made a great outcry, the curlews and plovers flying over them and whistling shrilly as if to frighten them away; but after a time the birds seemed to become accustomed to the boys and to regard them as ordinary objects the landscape and no longer to be feared.
One of Donald's early visits to the lake resulted in a situation that gave him some discomfort and uneasiness, and cost him a pair of boots and spurs. He saw a brood of young ducks in a little cove and, intending to try to capture them, he ran into the water at the cove's mouth to cut them off from going back into the lake. Almost before he reached the edge of the water he sank so deep in the soft, soapy mire that he wished to get back to firm ground, but found that he could not stir. Jack had not seen what Donald was doing until he had almost reached the water, and then he called to him to come back. He now shouted to Donald to stand still. Then he ran back thirty or forty yards to his horse and, mounting, rode to the edge of the firm ground, and from there tossed his rope over Donald's head. Donald fixed it about his chest, close under the arms, and Jack shortened the rope and tried with his own strength to pull Donald out, but found that impossible. He was fast in the mire and, while he did not sink, he could move his legs not at all. Jack took a turn on the rope about the saddle-horn and started the horse away gradually. This pulled Donald over, but did not move his legs. Jack rode back again and got Donald's horse, and threw that rope also over Donald's head; then, stripping off his own coat, he tossed it to Donald and told him to wrap it around his chest and so to make a pad against which the ropes could draw.