drive a stake in the bank.
For what purpose? Why, to ascertain whether we were going up or down
stream! While we drifted in the now blistering sun, we talked about
_meat_. With a devilish persistence we quite exhausted the subject. We
discussed the best methods for making a beefsteak delicious. It made us
very hungry for meat. The Kid announced that he could feel his backbone
sawing at the front of his shirt. But perhaps that was only the
hyperbole of youth. Bill confessed that he had once grumbled at his good
wife for serving the steak too rare. He now stated that at the first
telegraph station he would wire for forgiveness. I advised him to wire
for money instead and buy meat with it. Personally I felt a sort of
wistful tenderness for packing-houses.

That day passed somehow, and the next morning we were still hungry for
meat. We spent most of the morning talking about it. In the blistering
windless afternoon, we drifted lazily. Now and then we took turns
cranking the engine.

We were going stern foremost and I was cranking. We rounded a bend
where the wall rocks sloped back, leaving a narrow arid sagebrush strip
along both sides of the stream. I had straightened up to get the kink
out of my back and mop the sweat out of my eyes, when I saw something
that made my stomach turn a double somersault.

A good eight hundred yards down stream at the point of a gravel-bar,
something that looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of drifting,
leafless brush moved slowly into the water. Now it appeared quite
distinct, and now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted it out. I
blinked my eyes and peered hard through the baffling yellow glare. Then
I reached for the rifle and climbed over the gunwhale. I smelled raw
meat.

Fortunately, we were drifting across a bar, and the slow water came only
to my shoulders. The thing eight hundred yards away was forging across
stream by this time--heading for the mouth of a coulee. I saw plainly
now that the brush grew out of a head. It was a buck with antlers.

Just below the coulee's mouth, the wall rocks began again. The buck
would be obliged to land above the wall rocks, and the drifting boat
would keep him going. I reached shore and headed for that coulee. The
sagebrush concealed me. At the critical moment, I intended to show
myself and start him up the steep slope. Thus he would be forced to
approach me while fleeing me. When I felt that enough time had passed, I
stood up. T