Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/364

274 This I did so that to move at the same time he did, he could not hear the noise made by me. When I was close enough I laid flat on the ground, shut my left hand, and placing it on the ground, resting my gun on my fist, took good aim and I got him.

At the crack of my gun the whole crowd were on their feet, and a moment later were at the scene of war. We went to the place where it lay, and beheld a very large white wolf lying there, "dead as a door nail."

This was the first time I had ever made such a mistake, and it was some time before I heard the last of it. The next morning when we got up, instead of being one band of Indians in sight, there were two. We made up our minds that we had discovered the finest trapping ground in America, and had a poor show to get away from it, but we went ahead and got our breakfast, just as though there were no Indians in sight of us, but we concluded we had better leave this part of the country, so we pulled out southwest across the valley, having no trouble until we struck the West Gallatin river.

A very large white wolf.

Here the beaver dams were so thick that it was difficult to find a place to cross. After prospecting some little