Andy Phillips, our teamster, was a character. A small, wiry man, dressed in a flannel shirt worn so long that it had become a second skin; an old coat many sizes too big for him, tied together at the breast by a bit of string, the sleeves being rolled up so as to give his hands a chance of coming out; a rusty old billycock hat, much indented and of uncertain brim. The fierce sun and wind and frost, weather and dirt, had tanned man and clothes to one uniform neutral tint; no human being could say what might once have been the colour of either. In conversation he did not shine, but when directly challenged to give an opinion he had an oracular way of delivering short, jerky sentences, prefaced by a turn of his quid and a spit, which was very imposing. There was no temptation to talk, though, for the cart was springless and the prairie not as smooth as a billiard table, so we were most mercilessly jolted and pitched about whenever the mules broke into the semblance of a trot. Very amusing were the prairie dogs, quaint little beasts living in townships of small mounds, arranged like ant-hills, with so much method and regularity that one might fancy that each little colony had its mayor, municipal officers, laws, ordinances and rules of etiquette. As we drew near, the inhabitants—tiny yellow beasts something between squirrels and weasels—would turn out in strength, taking their stands each on the top of his house, with tails most impertinently cocked, barking, yapping, scolding with absurd little voices to warn us off; but as soon as the cart came close to the village, there was universal panic and _sauve qui peut_; the braggarts with one consent would take headers into their holes; not a prairie dog to be seen until we reached the next township, where the same comedy of threats, rage and terror would be played anew. For many miles we jolted along without seeing anything in the way of game to shoot at, but at last we came within a few hundred yards of a couple of antelope. Their backs were turned to us and they were feeding up wind, so Oliver got down and tried to stalk them, but there was not covert enough to hide a shrew-mouse, let alone a big Blue well over six feet; one of them curled round and caught a sight of him as he was crawling up, and they galloped away into space. The only chance of getting near to the pretty, shy creatures would be when the nature of the ground, where the prairie is cut up into divides by dry water-courses (canyons), would enable the hunter to creep up to them unseen, or bring him upon them suddenly without his having had any previous inkling of their whereabouts. Although the eye stretched to the bounds of a round horizon, the irregularities of the prairie sometimes hid objects close by, or on the next divide.