crest. Gesnip and Cleeta peeped through the high grass. Below them was a
wide plain, dotted with clumps of bushes, and scattered over it they
could see a great herd of elk, whose broad, shining antlers waved above
the grass and bushes upon which they were feeding.

"Are those elk too?" asked Cleeta, presently, pointing toward the
foothills at their left.

"No," replied her sister, "I think those are antelope. I like to see
them run. How funny their tails shake. But watch the men; they are going
to shoot."

As she spoke, four of the hunters, who had crept well up toward the
game, rose to their feet, holding their bows horizontally, not
perpendicularly. These weapons, which were made of cedar wood, were
about four feet in length, painted at the ends black or dark blue, the
middle, which was almost two inches broad, being wrapped with elk sinew.
The strings also were of sinew. The quiver which each man carried at his
side was made from the skin of a wild cat or of a coyote. A great hunter
like Sholoc might make his quiver from the tails of lions he had killed.
Projecting from the quiver were the bright-feathered ends of the arrows,
which were of reed and were two or three feet long, with points of bone,
flint, or obsidian.

The hunters, knowing how hard it was to kill large game, had chosen
their arrows carefully, taking those that had obsidian points. Almost at
the same moment they let fly their shafts. Three elk leaped into the
air. One tumbled over in a somersault which broke one of its antlers,
and then lay dead, shot through the heart by Sholoc. Another took a few
leaps, but a second arrow brought it to its knees. Then it sank slowly