ned down into the big canyon. All at once R.C.
held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With abatement of breath I listened,
but heard nothing except the mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I
heard a whistle," he said. We went on, all eyes and ears.

R.C. and I flattered ourselves that together we made rather a good
hunting team. We were fairly well versed in woodcraft and could slip
along stealthily. I possessed an Indian sense of direction that had
never yet failed me. To be sure we had much to learn about deer
stalking. But I had never hunted with any man whose ears were as quick
as R.C.'s. A naturally keen hearing, and many years of still hunting,
accounted for this faculty. As for myself, the one gift of which I was
especially proud was my eyesight. Almost invariably I could see game in
the woods before any one who was with me. This had applied to all my
guides except Indians. And I believed that five summers on the Pacific,
searching the wide expanse of ocean for swordfish fins, had made my eyes
all the keener for the woods. R.C. and I played at a game in which he
tried to hear the movement of some forest denizen before I saw it. This
fun for us dated back to boyhood days.

Suddenly R.C. stopped short, with his head turning to one side, and his
body stiffening. "I heard that whistle again," he said. We stood
perfectly motionless for a long moment. Then from far off in the forest
I heard a high, clear, melodious, bugling note. How thrilling, how
lonely a sound!

"It's a bull-elk," I replied. Then we sat down upon a log and listened.
R.C. had heard that whistle in Colorado, but had not recognized it. Just
as the mournful howl of a wolf is the wildest, most haunting sound of
the wilderness, so is the bugle of the elk the noblest, most melodious
and thrilling. With tingling nerves and strained ears we listened. We
heard elk bugling in different directions, hard to locate. One bull
appeared to be low down, another high up, another working away. R.C. and
I decided to stalk them. The law prohibited the killing of elk, but that
was no reason why we might not trail them, and have the sport of seeing
them in their native haunts. So we stole softly through the woods,
halting now and then to listen, pleased to note that every whistle we
heard appeared to be closer.

At last, apparently only a deep thicketed ravine separated us from the
ridge upon which the elk were bugling. Here our stalk began to become
really exciting. We