Abundant Wild Life In the days when Harrison was in its swaddling clothes, wild life was very abundant thereabouts. As many as a dozen or fourteen in a pack, the grey wolves roamed through the pine ridges, after sheep, youngcattle or colts, ham-stringing and pulling down yearlings when needing them for fcod. In the Spoon Butte country there was once one of the largest bunches of antelope that ever congregated together, said to have numbered three hundred fifty to four hundred. Frequently small bunches of antelope are seen, especially in the winter, numbering forty or fifty, and the writer remembers having seen perhaps seventv-five in one drove in the Mitchell vallev 'of Scottsbluff

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county. The pine ridges of Sioux county at that time also abounded in blacktail deer, a few whitetail deer, and once in a while mountain sheep were seen in such places as Coliseum rocks.

Antelope Kill Rattlers The antelope is usually timid, but has a particular antipathy to rattlesnakes. It is

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

either unafraid of them, or is so terrorized that it will fight them with the wonderful skill of the wilderness. When an antelope finds a rattlesnake it immediately gives battle. Its manner of attack is three quick jumps. The second time its hoofs strike the ground it is with great rapidity, directly upon the snake and away before it has time to strike. Time after time it repeats the maneuver, until the rattler is literally cut to pieces by its sharp hoofs.