The mess certainly needed meat; therefore I adopted other tactics. Abandoning the fruitless efforts to reach the game by stealth, I rose to my feet but was instantly discovered. I sent two or three shots at a venture as the little herd faced me, but the bullets fell short of the mark, and with a few bounds the game was over the hills and far away. It became clear to me that the capture of the alert antelope, on the open plain, is quite a different undertaking from the shooting of deer in the forest. It would have been a far greater pleasure, and quite as easy, to have written that I went back to the trail for horses, and again returned with two fine antelope which were proudly exhibited amid the grateful plaudits of the admiring camp!--but the statement would lack veracity if not verisimilitude. It is true, however, that we did secure several antelope later. A description of this out-of-door life would be incomplete if it failed to give at least a glimpse of a certain type of unanticipated events, which now and then were unfolded in our pathway; exotics quite out of their native setting, like an oil painting in a woodshed. Now, on that very night, Doctor Brown had pitched his big tent about a mile south of our camp. In the stillness of the evening, we heard issuing from it the sound of several voices in well rendered music. The familiar melodies were like a letter from home and in pleasing contrast with the yelping of prairie wolves, to which we had grown accustomed. In the morning, when we moved out into line the Browns were in advance. The ladies sat upon their horses gracefully, as Kentucky girls usually do, using old-fashioned side saddles. The cow-girl saddle even in the West appears then not yet to have come into use. Fred addressed the young ladies, expressing appreciation of the music we heard on the preceding evening. They did not seem to have suspected that their voices would be heard at so great a distance. One of the boys, who rarely attempted to produce any music (except now and then a rollicking negro melody), spoke to the young ladies in unqualified praise of the music sometimes discoursed in our camp, whereupon the Doctor at once invited us to come over that evening and bring any noise-producing instruments that we might boast. With some proper if not necessary apology for the undeserved compliment from our companion, we accepted the invitation, stating that we should come, not indeed in hope of contributing anything of value to the music, but in the pleasant expectation of meeting Mrs. Brown and also of gaining more knowledge from the Doctor, who appeared to be a man from whom we might learn very much, as he seemed to be well informed in botany and geology. Incidentally (!) we hoped to meet the young ladies again.