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mare and Stanton riding a bay gelding called Scamp that belonged to his father; they led a packhorse loaded with their sleeping bags, hobbles, and food, for they intended to stay out for a week or so. They rode in the blue riding jeans that they called levis, with thick woollen shirts and windproof jackets suitable for the high altitudes that they were bound for; they rode in saddles with saddlebags, and they carried their bows slung across their backs. All this was normal to them, as it was to most of the citizens of Hazel; they had made this sort of expedition in most of the summer vacations of their lives. They were skilled and experienced horsemen in the mountains, and their equipment was superbly good.
    Hazel lies in a shallow, fertile valley beside the mountains, at an altitude of about three thousand feet. It took themhalf a day to reach the edge of the Primitive Area; they camped there at about six thousand feet, making a short day of the first one. The next day they were up at dawn and in the saddle by eight o’clock. They descended by rocky trails into the valley of the Duncan River and commenced the long climb up the side of Sugar Mountain, zig-zagging all through the hot afternoon across the grassy slopes and in and out of the fir woods.
    They camped that night in a pasture with good feed for the horses by Emerald Lake at about eight thousand feet, and went on next day above the tree line across granite screes still covered in the shaded parts with patches of snow. They descended a little and camped soon after midday by the edges of Duncan’s Lake in a little grassy meadow between high screes, with the twin peaks of Saddle Mountain towering up above them, snow-clad, to about eleven thousand feet. This was their permanent camp from which they would proceed on foot after the deer.
    They ate well that evening, for they would be travelling hard and eating only cold food for the next day or two. They had brought with them a five-foot spinning rod and had no difficulty in catching half a dozen eager little trout in half an hour. They made a fire and cooked a supper of hot buckwheat cakes and syrup, with bacon, trout, and a fried egg all piled together on the plate and eaten together, with hot muffins, butter, and jam as a side dish and a huge pot of hot, sweet coffee to wash it down. Replete and comatose in the dusk by the lakeside they discussed their plans.
    “I guess we’d better try it up the north side, by Cooper’s Gully, as if you were going to Trout Falls,” Chuck said. “The wind’s been in the south the last two days. I reckon they’ll be there, if they’re anywhere.”
    “They’ll be feeding in the sun by midday,” Stanton said. “They always get into the sun when they’re up high. You know somethin’? I think they’ll be on the far side of the gully, up by Indian Hat.”
    They started on foot soon after dawn, after a breakfast cooked before the sun got up. They left the horses hobbled in the meadow and left their sleeping bags and most of their equipment; they went with packs upon their backs consisting of a little bread and tinned meat wrapped up in a blanket, and their pockets full of wrapped candies.
    For three hours they climbed the northern spur of Saddle Mountain, getting up above the tree line again in the granite screes. From the ridge they could look down into the wooded, pasture cleft of Cooper’s Gully. On the sunny side facing them they saw deer feeding, in among the trees, perhaps two miles away. They had no glasses with them because of the weight, but the animals were distinct in the clear air.
    Chuck said, “I guess we’ve got to get down wind from them. Get up behind, them, ’n come down from the top.”
    The geologist said, “They’ll move down the valley as the shadow comes round—keep in the sun. We’ll have to cross way down below them.”
    “Uh-huh. We got quite a walk.”
    They made their way down into Cooper’s Gully, moving down the scree as quietly as they