“Not a bit,” said Jack. “I like this riding on a stage, but I don’t know just how long I’ll continue to like it.”
They had now turned from the flat prairie, over which the smooth road ran straight, and were entering a wide valley of the mountains, which gradually closed in on them until there seemed hardly room for more than the river that flowed through it and the road.
“That’s Wolf Creek,” said the driver, motioning toward the stream with his whip. “And this here canyon that we are going through is called Prickly Pear Canyon.”
On either side of the stream the hills rose sharply, sometimes in steep grassy slopes, shaggy with clumps of small pines and spruces, at others, in a sheer rocky precipice, or yet again in steep slopes covered with small shrubbery through which great knobs of rock showed here and there.
“Any game on these hills?” asked Hugh of the driver.
“Plenty of deer,” was the reply, “and some elk; lots of bear, too. Not many people travel over these hills, except prospectors, and they don’t do any hunting to amount to anything.”
As he finished speaking, Jack, who had been scanning the hillside ahead of the team, suddenly grasped Hugh’s arm and said, “There’s a deer now, Hugh.”
“Sure enough,” said Hugh, and all hands looking, a black-tail was seen feeding alone on the hillside, not eating the grass, but walking from one clump of weeds or brush to another and biting a mouthful of food from each. As they drew nearer, the animal heard the trotting of the horses or the rattle of the coach and stood for a few moments looking innocently at the team as it approached. The deer was a young buck, his horns, of course, in the velvet, for it was but the last of June. He studied the team with his huge ears turned forward to catch the sound which it made, and every now and then lifted his head higher, and seemed to feel the air with his nose.
At last, when the coach was fairly close to him, the driver said, “Do either of you want to take a shot at him?”
“Not I,” said Hugh.