To prepare the elk's carcass for transportation to camp and to load the greater part of it on the pack horse took only a little time, and the boys went on toward home. Jack congratulated Donald on the shot. "It was a good one," he said, "and I believe you're an older hunter than I thought. The way you killed that antelope the other day, and this elk, makes me think that you've done a lot of hunting. Of course, I'm not much of a believer in this buck-fever that you read about in the books, but it certainly is true that when pilgrims are shooting at game for the first time, they don't always keep their heads. I reckon, though, that you've hunted more than I supposed, and I believe that you can shoot all right, and maybe can beat some of us out here who think we can shoot pretty steadily." CHAPTER XXIV FLAGGING AN ANTELOPE The days passed pleasantly and swiftly. It was not the season for killing game, and except when fresh meat was required no hunting was done. Nevertheless, there was work enough. Every day one man rode off and made a long round of the basin looking carefully for the tracks of cattle leading away from it. If fresh tracks were seen, the cattle were followed, rounded up, and driven back to the home range. The work on a ranch is never ended. The irrigating ditches had to be looked after and the water from time to time turned on or off the hay-fields or the garden-patch. Haying time would come before long, and in that country hay was money, and worth more than a cent a pound. When no work was pressing, Jack Danvers and Donald got on their horses and rode down to the lake, and perhaps lay there on a little knoll and with their glasses watched the young ducks swimming on the lake, or the young plover, sandpipers and curlews that fed along its borders. The first two or three times the boys went down there, all the young birds hid, and the old ones made a great outcry, the curlews and plovers flying over them and whistling shrilly as if to frighten them away; but after a time the birds seemed to become accustomed to the boys and to regard them as ordinary objects the landscape and no longer to be feared.