Yet Wild As They Were, These Mountains Were Thickly Peopled.
As I
climbed farther, I found the broad dusty paths made by the elk, as
they filed across the mountainside.
The grass on all the terraces
was trampled down by deer; there were numerous tracks of wolves, and
in some of the rougher and more precipitous parts of the ascent, I
found foot-prints different from any that I had ever seen, and which
I took to be those of the Rocky Mountain sheep. I sat down upon a
rock; there was a perfect stillness. No wind was stirring, and not
even an insect could be heard. I recollected the danger of becoming
lost in such a place, and therefore I fixed my eye upon one of the
tallest pinnacles of the opposite mountain. It rose sheer upright
from the woods below, and by an extraordinary freak of nature
sustained aloft on its very summit a large loose rock. Such a
landmark could never be mistaken, and feeling once more secure, I
began again to move forward. A white wolf jumped up from among some
bushes, and leaped clumsily away; but he stopped for a moment, and
turned back his keen eye and his grim bristling muzzle. I longed to
take his scalp and carry it back with me, as an appropriate trophy of
the Black Hills, but before I could fire, he was gone among the
rocks. Soon I heard a rustling sound, with a cracking of twigs at a
little distance, and saw moving above the tall bushes the branching
antlers of an elk.
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