In a week we crossed the valley by short stages and again reached the loftier mountains. One afternoon we arrived at a stream where we resolved to pass the night, as we did not know whether we should find water farther on. Tiger at once hastened off to look for game, and as my comrades preferred a rest, I set out to try my luck too. I told Antonio to follow me on Lizzy, that I might not have to carry the game myself, and had got about a mile from camp when I noticed from a clump of oaks a herd of deer on a grassy spot ahead of me, which looked like the ordinary Virginia deer, but were darker-coloured. I took up a deer-call to draw them toward me, as the spot where I was standing was too barren for me to be able to stalk them. I posted myself near an oak, and Antonio sat on Lizzy behind me. The herd advanced toward me on hearing my call, and were near enough when Antonio cried to me, "Here! here!" I fancied he was alluding to the approaching deer, and whispered that I could see them; but he repeated his "here!" and presently added, "Look to your right!" I turned and saw an enormous snow-white bear forty yards from me, I tried to fire, but the bear got behind a large oak, and then behind another, and so was a good distance off ere I could despatch a bullet after it, which I heard enter a tree. It escaped me, as I had left Trusty in camp, for his feet were sore from running over sharp stones lately. The bear heard the call and hurried up, believing that there was booty for it. It was only a variety of the common black bear. I would gladly have secured its beautiful skin, as it is a rarity, but it was out of my reach, and hence I returned to the deer, which after my shot had disappeared in a distant wood. I went after them, and found them grazing again: when I emerged from the bushes I shot a large deer, and found to my surprise that it belonged to a genus I had never seen before. It was of a very dark, almost black, colour, much larger than a Virginia deer, and more lightly built, with a longer black scut. It had cast its antlers, and the new ones had already grown to some size. We packed the entire animal on Lizzy, and carried it to camp, where Owl called it a mule-stag or black-tail deer, a variety not uncommon in the lower regions of the Rocky Mountains.