almost always the farthest in the background and the first away
when danger threatened. The ladies could look out for themselves.
They had no horns to save; and what do the fool women mean by
showing so little sense, anyway! They deserve what they get! It
used to amuse me a lot to observe the utter abandonment of all
responsibility by these handsome gentlemen. When it came time to
depart, they departed. Hang the girls! They trailed along after
as fast as they could.

The waterbuck-a fine large beast about the size of our caribou,
a well-conditioned buck resembling in form and attitude the
finest of Landseer's stags-on the other hand, had a little more
sense of responsibility, when he had anything to do with the sex
at all. He was hardly what you might call a strictly domestic
character. I have hunted through a country for several days at a
time without seeing a single mature buck of this species,
although there were plenty of does, in herds of ten to fifty,
with a few infants among them just sprouting horns. Then finally,
in some small grassy valley, I would come on the Men's Club.
There they were, ten, twenty, three dozen of them, having the
finest kind of an untramelled masculine time all by themselves.
Generally, however, I will say for them, they took care of their
own peoples. There would quite likely be one big old fellow, his
harem of varying numbers, and the younger subordinate bucks all
together in a happy family. When some one of the lot announced
that something was about, and they had all lined up to stare in
the suspected direction, the big buck was there in the foreground
of inquiry. When finally they made me out, it was generally the
big buck who gave the signal. He went first, to be sure, but his
going first was evidently an act of leadership, and not merely a