One or two fawns are born about May. In the mountains the cow usually goes high up to bring forth her fawn. Personally I have only had a chance to observe the wapiti in spring in the neighborhood of my ranch in the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri. Here the cow invariably selected some wild, lonely bit of very broken country in which there were dense thickets and some water. There was one such patch some fifteen miles from my ranch, in which for many years wapiti regularly bred. The breeding cow lay by herself, although sometimes the young of the preceding year would lurk in the neighborhood. For the first few days the calf hardly left the bed, and would not move even when handled. Then it began to follow the mother. In this particular region the grass was coarse and rank, save for a few patches in the immediate neighborhood of little alkali springs. Accordingly, it was not much visited by the cattle or by the cowboys. Doubtless in the happier days of the past, when man was merely an infrequent interloper, the wapiti cows had made their nurseries in pleasanter and more fruitful valleys. But in my time the hunted creatures had learned that their only chance was to escape observation. I have known not only cows with young calves, but cows when the calves were out of the spotted coat, and even yearlings, to try to escape by hiding—the great beasts lying like rabbits in some patch of thick brush, while I rode close by. The best hunting horse I ever had, old Manitou, in addition to his other useful qualities, would serve as a guard on such occasions. I would leave him on a little hillock to one side of such a patch of brush, and as he walked slowly about, grazing and rattling his bridle chains, he would prevent the wapiti breaking cover on that side, and give me an additional chance of slipping around toward them—although if the animal was a cow, I never molested it unless in dire need of meat.