Next morning, cold and still snowing. Peeping out at daylight, I saw only three mules. Strange the others should have deserted us! But they were trailed through the snow and recovered. To keep warm we had to remain in bed. Wood was too scarce and too wet to waste for other than cooking purposes.
In the afternoon we gave in, and with superhuman efforts packed the wagons and pushed ahead toward the foothills. Game had now become a question of secondary consideration.
The wagons ploughed through snow to their hubs, and we walked to avoid a sudden immersion in a drift.
Once more near Shorthorns’ many supplies, we camped to spend our last day in rest, before returning to the post.
At dark mine host, who had ridden off to look for his stock, came into camp with a deer across his saddle. The lucky cowboy, who cared nothing for sport, had ridden right over four deer, and, as he was always armed, had killed one. To see our whole party, from Mr. X. to the junior teamster and “Grover Cleveland,” gather about this interesting spectacle, would have proved the condition of our game-bag. The venison was given to us, and as we had as little pride as game, we accepted it. It proved that there was, or had been, one deer in the country anyhow.
On this, our last day of grace, Shorthorns and I rode out to continue the motion. The weather had moderated, and being in the foothills, snow was only of depth sufficient to facilitate trailing. When I least expected it, of course, my guide bleated as a fawn, and I saw a great buck jump from under a piñon. We both fired and the deer dropped, but limped off at a lively gait. Of course, my bullet went off to meet the moon, while Shorthorns’ cut several legs and pierced the intestines of the buck. At least, so the modest cowboy told me. Just which intestine he did not say, though with a frontier veracity he would doubtless have deposed to it, if asked. We could easily follow the trail by the blood on the snow, and found several places where he had lain down to rest and bleed. At one such halt Shorthorns dismounted, and, giving me his bridle, ran on to finish the buck.
But I was not to be taken in in that manner again. Tying the animals, I outran him, and found him hot on the trail. His welcome was not as cordial as it might have been, but together we chased the wounded buck over hills and cañons, in snow and mud, through brush and over stones and cactus, for five miles, finally losing his trail in that of four others almost at the prairie’s edge. Shorthorns showed me four black spots on a hillside, distant several hundred yards. He called them deer, but they might have been calves, goats, sheep or dogs for aught I knew, and I had lost some confidence in his veracity since gaining his acquaintance. Still I thought that if the black spots should wait long enough, or if they could be lassoed and tied, I might make it lively for at least one of them. So we sneaked and sneaked and sneaked. Almost within range we halted, drank some melted snow from a tank, took some cartridges in the left hand and instinctively fingered the triggers of our rifles. It became intensely interesting. I could smell venison steak broiling, and began mentally to distribute deer hams and saddles to our less fortunate friends at the post.
Just below where the black spots should be we ascended the hillside, cautiously stopping just this side of the summit; we had seen no deer and none were in sight. Black spots? Yes—lots of rocks; but whether or not there had ever been deer there, I must not say, as I may wish to go there again, and Shorthorns is a good shot.
On the weary tramp back to the animals, I heard my guide repeat his little fawn solo in a minor key and saw him fire at two does that seemed to spring from a hole in the ground. Then followed one of the grandest displays of firearms—if not of marksmanship—known to Fourth of July celebrations.