come down to the creek and had drunk. There were tracks of
bucks, and of does and of fawns. Walt and Bat kept grumbling and
talking. They wanted to stop off and camp, and shoot.

Pilot Peak was still on our left; but toward evening the trail we were
following turned off from the creek and climbed through gooseberry and
thimbleberry bushes to the top of a plateau, where was a park of cedars
and flowers, and where was a spring. General Ashley dug in with his
heel, and we off-packs, to camp. It was a mighty good camping spot,
again. (Note 30.) The timber thickened, beyond, and there was no sense
in going on into it, for the night. Into the heel mark we stuck the
flagstaff.

We went right ahead with our routine. The recruits had a chance to help,
if they wanted to. But they loafed. There was plenty of time before
sunset. The sun shone here half an hour or more longer than down below.
We were up pretty high; some of the aspens had turned yellow, showing
that there had been a frost, already. So we thought that we must be up
about ten thousand feet. The stream we followed had flowed swift,
telling of a steep grade.

Fitzpatrick the Bad Hand got out his camera, to take pictures. He never
wasted any time. Not ordinary camp pictures, you know, but valuable
pictures, of animals and sunsets and things. Jays and speckled
woodpeckers were hopping about, and a pine-squirrel sat on a limb and
scolded at us until he found that we were there to fit in and be company
for him. One side of the plateau fell off into rocks and cliffs, and a
big red ground-hog was lying out on a shelf in the sunset, and
whistling his call.

Fitz was bound to have a picture of him, and sneaked around, to stalk
him and snap him, close. But just as he was started--"Bang!" I jumped
three feet; we all jumped. It was that fellow Bat. He had shot off his
forty-five Colt's, at the squirrel, and with it smoking in his hand he
was grinning, as if he had played a joke on us. He hadn't hit the
squirrel, but it had disappeared. The ground-hog disappeared, the jays
and the woodpeckers flew off, and after the report died away you
couldn't hear a sound or see an animal. The gun had given notice to the
wild life to vacate, until we were gone. And where that bullet hit,
nobody could tell.

Fitzpatrick turned around and came back. He knew it wasn't much use
trying, now. We were disgusted, but General Ashley was the one to speak,
because he was Patrol leader.

"You ought