“The old days are gone,” he said. “Things are different now. It’s hard pickings for a man to make a living in times like these.”
But Rice looked forth on the world with the optimism of youth. It was a land of plenty in which he lived. He had planned a hunt in the hills of Western Colorado and urged Woodson to throw in with them.
“There’s millions of deer up there,” he said. “They’re paying three dollars apiece for venison saddles at the mines. I’ve seen ten thousand mule deer boiling through the passes, all in sight at once, when they gathered from the Gore Range and the Rabbit Ear to drift down to the Oak Hills for the winter. There’s deer without end. I hunted up there last year. We loaded thirty four-horse freight-wagons with deer saddles, high as we could lash ’em on, all from a two-day kill in one pass as they came streaming down, a thousand to the band. There’s good money in meat-hunting for the mines. You better throw in with us, Mart, and come along.”
They urged their case but Woodson would not join. The rapidity with which old conditions had slipped past him filled him with a sense of bewilderment. He could not get his start, as he had intended, by hide-hunting on the plains. That day had gone, and some way he could see no future in hunting deer to supply Denver and the Colorado mining towns with meat. Perhaps he would better go to the lumber camps, either east or west, and take up that end. There was more permanency to that. He could not make up his mind and decided at last to go back to the quiet hills of the Yellowstone for one final look around while making his decision.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Platte and Missouri Rivers. The expedition started May 14th.
[2] To Washington.
[3] The organization was military.
[4] Forty-one men, full musters.
[5] A small cannon.