I simply stood, with my lower jaw hanging down, and looked after them till they were out of sight. Then I went and got my horse and went to camp. Sam and Dick were there with the saddles of three antelopes. When I told them what I had been doing, they tried to console me, but I wouldn't be consoled. After dinner, Sam picked up my rifle and looked it over carefully.
"Why, look here, you blooming idiot," said he. "No wonder you couldn't kill at short range. The wedge has slipped up under your rear sight two notches. She's elevated for 350 yards, and at that rate would shoot about a foot high at a hundred yards." I looked and found it even so. Then I offered him and Dick a dollar each if they would kick me, but they wouldn't.
Sam said good-naturedly: "Come, go with me and get the head of the buck I killed. It's a very handsome one, and only two miles from camp."
I said I didn't want any heads for my own use unless I could kill their owners myself, but would take this one home for a friend, so we saddled our horses and started.
As we reached the top of a hill about a mile from camp a large buck that was grazing ahead of us jumped and ran away to what he seemed to consider a safe distance, and stopped to look at us. Sam generously offered me the shot, and springing out of my saddle I threw down my rifle, took careful aim and fired. At the crack the buck turned just half way round, but was unable to make a single jump and sank dead in his tracks.
Sam is ordinarily a quiet man, but he fairly shouted at the result of my shot. I paced the distance carefully to where the carcass lay, and it was exactly 290 steps. The buck was standing broadside to me and I had shot him through the heart. Of course, it was a scratch. I could not do it again perhaps in twenty shots, and yet when I considered that I shot for one single animal and got him I could not help feeling a little proud of it. As we approached the animal, not knowing just where I had hit him, I held my rifle in readiness, but Sam said:
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of his getting up. One of those Winchester express bullets is all an antelope needs, no matter what part of the body you hit him in."
This old fellow had a fine head, and we took it off, and now as I write it gazes down upon me with those large, lustrous black eyes, from its place on the wall, as proudly and curiously as it did there on the prairie when I looked at it through the sights of my Winchester. His portrait adorns page 199 of this book, and though the artist has treated it with a master's hand, it does not possess the lordly beaming, the fascinating grace, the timid beauty that distinguished the living animal.