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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 65 the heavy rifle, and strode out through the high grass, which was so beaded with dew that walking was like wading an ice-cold stream. The horses were standing on widespread legs, heads near the ground, asleep, while the burros, weary from the long pull with the heavy packs of the days before, were lying on the ground, all huddled together. The morning star was at its brightest as I started across the valley, but by the time I had picked a splashing path across the current of the little river and got fairly started up the trail, it was paling. Little flecks of purple clouds began to appear above the sun's approaching glow, as though they had been newly created. The range to the west began to lift its rugged ascents into view in a purple radiance. The eastern hills grew from shapeless masses of gloom into rounded eminences with dainty fringes of aspens and slender minarets of spruces against the faintly glowing sky. I wished I had started half and hour earlier, and quickened my pace a little. In the growing twilight I could see a furry skunk in his sleek coat of jet black and snowy white, treading the clumps of bunch-grass, picking up the benumbed insects before the sun's heat might give them the vitality to escape. In the trail ahead of me a fox trotted. I was conscious of the faint presence of his scent, but did not place it until I saw the flash of his fur above the grass. He knew I was following, but knew, too, that he was safest down in the sinuous passage between high walls of grass and flowers where he could make a far safer, swifter flight than over the rough ground to either side. A mile or so above camp I left the trail and crossed the stream again, getting my feet no wetter in wading, but feeling the icy chill pervade the water in my shoes, which my feet had warmed in the comparative dryness of the beaten track. Close to the rippling surface a colder breath moved, and the scrubby willows had a coating of white frost. I brushed a furry moth from a twig in passing, but it was too cold for more than one very feeble flutter. It fell wide-stretched on the water, and as the current swept it into a quiet eddy, it disappeared so quietly that one might suppose it had sunk of its own weight. I marked the spot where lay a trout—so big that its mouth could take in an insect of that size without a splash—as a good place to drop a feathered imitation when I next carried my fly rod that way. There was no mistake that it was very light. My eyes had been growing accustomed to the dimness, meeting the dawn halfway, but the first glow of the rising sun was just striking the tops of the highest hill. The sky was a turquoise blue all across the dome. The clouds, which had been purple, had faded to lavender, flamed with a tint of orange, and were now melting away in yellow fleeces. It would soon be time when all sensible deer would be deep in the thickest of the green timber, where it would be all but impossible to come upon one of them unawares. Already the burros, far down in the valley where camp lay, were up and moving stiffly down to get a drink at the river. The southern hill before me was one I had marked the year before as a likely place for deer. It rose in smooth slopes and narrow benches a thousand feet or so, fringed on top with the edge of the deep, thick forest of spruces that ran back on the plateau beyond. The ascending surface had spruce and aspen groves lying on it in long streamers, divided by half a dozen open, grassy glades, each with a tiny rill gurgling down the center, coming from the banks of snow that still lay shaded by the dense crown of spruces. The streams were fringed with the succulent marsh herbs that deer and elk most fancy as dessert after filling up on vines and tender boughs. It does not pay to hasten or to get out of breath when hunting deer, so I climbed very, very slowly upward, keeping in the shelter of the bushy young aspens that fringed the bigger trees at the edge of one of the ascending glades. At each step, as I placed my foot to avoid any crackling twig, I looked all around and listened for any sound of game. The early coats of deer almost perfectly match in color the dry bunches of grass, so much so that in the imperfect light one had to study closely each outline, else some proud stag might bear his coveted burden of venison out of range at a bound before my eyes had seen the slender legs and gracefully borne head. There were plenty of tracks in the mellow earth, some almost obliterated by two or three successive dews, and some apparently as fresh as though the cushioned hoof had just been lifted from them. In spite all my caution, a crack of twigs and stamp of hooves off to the right indicated that an alarm had reached eyes or ears or nostrils of a deer. I sat still and listened to the beating of my heart until apparently the animal decided that its suspicions did not justify precipitate flight, for though it went on, it was in a noiseless walk. A STATELY BUCK HE WAS