As the cattle were being yoked, Captain Chiles called up “Little Breech” and directed him to get the large cow bell he had brought along to put on the black steer that was in the habit of wandering from the herd at night. The wagonmaster, with the bell in hand, walked up to “Skeesicks,” who was sitting on a wagon tongue resting his weary legs, and said, “‘Skeesicks,’ I am determined not to lose you again, and am going to take no chances.” Then he buckled the strap attached to the bell around “Skeesick’s” neck. Turning to “Little Breech” he gave him particular orders to drive “Skeesicks” in the cavayard and in no event to allow him to wander away again. All that afternoon “Skeesicks” plodded along with the lame cattle in the cavayard, at the rear of the train, the bell ringing at every step. In the evening, after we had corralled, he went to Captain Chiles and plaintively beseeched him to remove the bell. The captain gently unbuckled the strap, but again charged “Little Breech” to keep his eye on “Skeesicks” and not permit him to wander from the train. [Illustration: HE PLODDED ALONG WITH THE LAME CATTLE.] IX. A KICKING GUN AND A BUCKING MULE. Here for some days we were traversing a continuous level plain, treeless and trackless, except for the road we traveled, covered with buffalo grass, then turned a beautiful straw color by the sun and dry weather, but still affording excellent pasturage. Not a tree had we seen, none since we crossed the Arkansas. We were slowly but regularly leaving behind us the monotonous plain, to enter upon a region of great natural beauty and attractiveness. On a beautiful morning after the train had been moving for a short time, the Rabbit Ear mounds were seen, peering up in the distance, through the hazy atmosphere. Yet we were a day’s journey from them. These twin diminutive sentinels of the Rockies, stationed here to the left of our road, could not have been more appropriately named, their resemblance to the ears of a jack-rabbit being strikingly obvious. A day or two after passing the Rabbit Ears we were fortunate in the beauty and attractiveness of the location of our corral. Immediately west of us the view was limited to a mile or two, shut off by the bluff rim of a stretch of table-land, rising perhaps a hundred feet above our level, the face of the elevation extending north and south, the road we were traveling passing around the base of its southern extremity. About midway of the rim of this plateau of table-land there was a small mound of regular sugar-loaf shape, rising to perhaps the height of twenty feet, on the top pinnacle of which stood a single buck antelope looking at the train as it was starting out just at sunrise. There he stood for some time stock still gazing at us. The morning was absolutely glorious, the perfect weather of New Mexico. I determined to give this solitary buck antelope a trial.