From the high water the trail through the swamp is impassable, so I have to go round it, keeping along on the small ridges, where birch and alder grow; continuing this for about eighteen miles, and crossing several deep creeks and swamps, through which the poor mules are literally dragged, get on to higher and comparatively dry land, two miles of which brings me to the entrance of what my guide calls the desert. The distance across it, he says, is forty miles, with but one chance of water. Into this barren waste I did not think the Indians would follow, so make up my mind to push on, although my men and mules are fearfully fagged. I thought the Indians intended to pursue us to the edge of this wilderness, and when off our guard, worn-out for want of sleep, killing us, and driving off the band of mules.
I am in the very paradise of the prong-buck (_Antilocapra Americana_). In bands of twenty or thirty they gallop close up to the mules, halt, have a good look, and suddenly scent danger; the leading bucks give a loud whistling snort, then away they all scamper, and rapidly disappear. We shot as many as we needed, but at this time the does we killed were heavy in fawn.
The size of the prong-buck, when fully grown, is somewhat larger than the domestic sheep; but its legs, being proportionably much longer, give it a greater altitude. The neck is also of greater length, and the head carried more erect. The hind-legs are longer than the fore ones; a wise provision, not only tending to give additional fleetness, but materially assisting it in climbing steep precipices and rocky crags, up and down which it bounds with astonishing speed and security.
The back is a pale dun colour; a transverse stripe between the eyes; the lip, and each side the muzzle, and a spot beneath the ear, dark reddish-brown; the entire underparts, the edges of the lips, a large and most conspicuous patch on either side the tail, pure white. The white meeting the brown of the back about midway on the sides, forms a well-defined waving line. Horns, hoofs, and nose black. The horns (so marked a feature in the prong-buck) are placed very far back, and much compressed in a lateral direction to about a third of their height, where they give out a thin triangular bracket-shaped prong, projecting upwards and forwards. Above this snag, the horns have a shiny surface, are rounded, and taper gradually to a sharp tip, bent into a hook. The horns vary greatly in the males. I have sometimes shot them with the prong hardly developed, sometimes springing from the horn near the tip, and in others growing close to the head, where it is always uneven and warty. The female is devoid of horns, or only has them in a rudimentary condition.
