That last was shouted at me as I gave a push with my pole and began to slide off down the hill out of the danger zone. Swinging round to a reluctant standstill, I meekly unslung my camera as Hope came down for it. Then, all set for a start, I watched him as he zigzagged back up the hill toward the buffalo. "Tusky" was blowing like a young Vesuvius, but the nervy fellow, not a whit daunted, edged up to within twenty feet of the steaming monster, waited calmly for the sun to come out from behind a cloud, and snapped the camera. Then we coasted back to the valley--I well in the lead,--leaving the resolute old monster in full possession of the field. Our chase of the fleet-footed _wapita_ was attended by less excitement but more exertion than was our pursuit of the bison. Following a trail from Violet Springs, we were lucky in encountering a herd of from four to five hundred grazing where the spring sunshine was uncovering the grass on a broad expanse of southerly sloping upland. We circled to the higher hills in an endeavour to drive a portion of the herd to the deeper snow of the valley, where we could overtake them on our ski. In the course of our climb we came upon a fine young bull of two years or thereabouts, lying in an alder thicket badly wounded from fighting. One of his graceful horns was snapped squarely off a foot from the head, his sides were frightfully bruised and torn, and so weak was he from loss of blood that he took no notice whatever of our approach. Hope said that few bulls are killed outright in their fights, but that most of the badly wounded ones ultimately die from "scab." Our efforts to turn the elk to the valley was only partially successful, for the main herd, as though divining our purpose, set off on a mad stampede for the mountains, and on a course which made it impossible to head them. Hope, however, at imminent risk of his neck, dropped like a meteor over the rim of the _mesa_, negotiated a precarious serpentine curve among the butts of a lot of deadfalls, and just succeeded in cutting off a large bunch of cows, half a dozen "spike" bulls, and a fine old fourteen-pointer. The bulls were brave enough at the beginning of the chase, where the snow was light and the going easy. The old fellow in particular kept well to the rear of his flying family, stopping every now and then to brandish his horns and give voice to clear, penetrating cries of defiance and anger. But as the herd wallowed into the _coulée_ that skirted the foot of the hills his courage deserted him. He, in turn, deserted his family, and it was _sauve qui peut_ for the lot of them. By the time our glistening hickories pulled us up on the flank of the bunch of heaving, sobbing cows, old "Fourteen Points" was a good hundred yards ahead, with the "spikes" scattered in between.