of the
kinds most easily observed in the Yellowstone Sanctuary.

[Illustration]

Driving from Gardiner, passing under the Great Tower of Eagle Rock on
which an Osprey has nested year after year as far back as the records
go, and wheeling into the open space in front of the Mammoth Hot Springs
Hotel, one is almost sure to come on a family of Deer wandering across
the lawn, or posing among the shrubbery, with all the artless grace of
the truly wild creature. These are the representatives of several
hundred that collect in fall on and about this lawn, but are now
scattered for the summer season over the adjoining hills, to come again,
no doubt in increased numbers, when the first deep snow shall warn them
to seek their winter range.

Like the other animals, these are natives of the region and truly wild,
but so educated by long letting alone that it is easy to approach within
a few yards.

The camera hunter should not fail to use this opportunity, not only
because they are wild and beautiful things, but because he can have the
films developed at the hotel over night, and so find out how his camera
is behaving in this new light and surroundings.

[Illustration]

This is the common Blacktailed Deer of the hill country, called Mule
Deer on account of its huge ears and the shape of its tail. In Canada I
knew it by the name of "Jumping Deer," from its gait, and in the Rockies
it is familiar as the "Bounding Blacktail"--"Bounding" because of the
wonderful way in which it strikes the ground with its legs held stiffly,
then rises in the air with little apparent effort, and lands some ten or
fifteen feet away. As the hunters say, "The Blacktail hits only the high
places in the landscape." On the level it does not run so well as the
Antelope or the Whitetailed Deer, and I often wondered why it had
adopted this laborious mode of speeding, which seemed so inferior to the
normal pace of its kin. But at length I was eyewitness of an episode
that explained the puzzle.

THE MOTHER BLACKTAIL'S RACE FOR LIFE

[Illustration]

In the fall of 1897 I was out for a Wolf hunt with the Eaton boys in the
Badlands near Medora, N. D. We had a fine mixed pack of dogs, trailers,
runners, and fighters. The runners were thoroughbred greyhounds, that
could catch any four-foot on the plains except perhaps a buck Antelope;
that I saw them signally fail in. But a Wolf, or even the swift Coyote,
had no chance of getting away from them provided