We were up before daylight to find that six or eight inches of light snow had fallen silently during the night, which lay piled up on the branches of the trees, draping the dense forests in ghostly white. Our drooping spirits revived, for we hoped that the tell-tale mantle would enable us to find the game we so much needed in our business. We broke our bread more cheerfully that morning than for two days previously, but at the council of war held over the frugal meal, decided that unless we scored that day we must make tracks for the nearest ranch the next morning, and try to make our scanty remnant of flour keep us alive until we could get there.
Breakfast over we scattered ourselves by the four points of the compass and set out. It fell to my lot to go up the cañon. Silently I strode through the forest, scanning the snow in search of foot-prints, but for an hour I could see none. Then, as I cautiously ascended a ridge, I heard a crash in the brush beyond and reached the summit just in time to see the latter end of a large bull elk disappear in the thicket.
He had not heard or seen me, but had winded me, and tarried not for better acquaintance. I followed his trail some three miles up the cañon, carefully penetrating the thickets and peering among the larger trees, but never a glimpse could I get and never a sound could I hear of him. He seemed unusually wild. I could see by his trail that he had not stopped, but had kept straight away on that long, swinging trot that is such a telling gait of the species, and which they will sometimes keep up for hours together. Finally I came to where he had left the cañon and ascended the mountain. I followed up this for a time, but seeing that he had not yet paused, and finding that my famished condition rendered me unequal to the climb, was compelled to abandon the pursuit and with a heavy heart return again to the cañon. I kept on up it, but could find no other game or sign of any. Like the red hunter, in the time of famine, who
"Vainly walked through the forest, Sought for bird, or beast, and found none; Saw no track of deer or rabbit, In the snow beheld no foot-prints, In the ghostly gleaming forest Fell and could not rise from weakness,"