| Show T26 STUDENT LIFE succeeded in dropping the gate without dismounting and no sooner had the gate dropped than the horses rushed through like water through a break in a dike My horse ran up the trail among thirty or forty of the leading ones which by my leaning forward in the saddle cut me from the view of my pursuers The men followed for about three miles when they decided that their efforts were in vain and gave up the chase SevI eral times they had got ahead of the band but each time the horses went in different directions and escaped On leaving the band about four it was just breaking day and the men who had lost their prev were nowhere in I rode up to the ranch sight rather late : and in answer to the many questions asked by the other men I told them that though I had slept some during the night I was certain that no horses were in the corral How that band of horses escaped from the corral that night was a great mystery to the men who slept only a few feet from the gate And they were greatly surprised when after their trouble with the stockmen was settled and we became better acquainted I told them how on that night I slept while the horses passed my post then quietly dropped the gate which gave them their freedom and escaped unnoticed among the first to leave the A D S corral miles from the corral rrom Over Tlc Divide We were up Salt Creek for a week’s stay and were hunting deer antelope wild chicken or any other kind of game that we should be fortunate enough to find It was late The big logs that fixed the fire for the night had been put on Because the weather was good and could be depended on to remain good we hadn’t put up the tent and our beds were spread in a half circle around the fire Supper was over There is nothing like a hunter’s appetite and there is no satisfaction like that he gets from satisfying it It had been a successful day Each man had made his kill and this and the calm peacegiving starry beauty of the night made the circle of sunburned firelit faces show happy “( ld Joey” with his cigarette-scorche- d mustache his fringe of half grey whiskers his hat on one side his head tipped the other way and one eye half closed had given us his usual preface “I’m damned if it wasn’t a night just like this — ” and was putting us into convulsions with the story of a bear which came to his camp ate his shoe and died before he got a hundred yards away when suddenly into the circle of light bv the big cottonwood tree came a horseman lie said “Hello gentlemen any of vou know Big Steve down at The Spur ranch ?” We all did “Has he got any friends here?” “You can bet vour life he hasn’t Been to supper?” |
