A WOULD-BE BIG-GAME HUNTER 9

else, and, for this purpose, some of them care but little
how they get them as long as they are forthcoming. We
have had one or two such men out here—luckily not many
of them—who hunted solely for such a purpose, and the
easier game was to kill the better they were pleased.
There was one in particular, of that sort, who came here.
His ambition was to have world fame as a big-game hunter,
to be able to say that he had slain a hundred different
species of big game. He was also desirous that his collec-
tion should include every species that exist on this conti-
nent. If he had been a man who was willing to travel
into the wilds and to rough it in quest of his specimens
one would not have thought so much of it, but he was
far from that. For one thing his physique was nothing
to boast about, and he could neither walk any distance
nor endure any discomforts, and in the second place he
had neither pluck nor skill with a rifle. When I last met
him he had done with this continent, having secured every-
thing except a musk ox, and for that he could not summon
up courage to try. The way he managed to get his bison
was most amusing, and as the story of his triumph was
told me by the man himself, and another version of it by
an eyewitness, I can give it to you in a fairly correct way.

Tt seems that this would-be great hunter—it is pleasing
to be able to say he was not an English-speaking man—
discovered that a small herd of bison was privately owned
by a cattle rancher in one of the western states, and
from him he secured the privilege of shooting a bull.
The price he had to pay for this favour was, according to
his own telling, an enormous one. The narrative he
recited to me of the killing of the poor old brute was long
and “hair-raising.” He had hunted the beast for two
days, and had wounded it, tracked it to its lair, had been
charged by the ferocious animal and was altogether a
hero. But the other account was far different. According
to that, the bull was so old and decrepit that his demise
had been determined on anyway. Moreover, when the
bold hunter sallied forth, clad in all the splendour of the
circus cowboy—he had himself photographed in his costume

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