Francis looked across the mesa at the antelope and shrugged. He was sure asked to do a lot of funny things. He started down the slide.

Going down was easy, and it wasn’t as far as it looked. In fifteen minutes he was at the bottom, in back of a small rise, and lying on his stomach waving the rag in the air.

Francis couldn’t see the antelope, and as the seconds turned into minutes, he wasn’t completely sure that the antelope could see his waving rag. He raised carefully up on his elbows in the grass, but could see nothing. Turning, he looked up at the slide—hoping to see Mr. Grimes calling him back. Again, he saw nothing.

This is silly, he thought. I don’t even know what’s happening. The antelope probably ran off when I started down the slide. He raised up again. Still nothing. The grass was so high—it was like a wall around him. He started to get up, then fell back. The only thing keeping him still was fear of ridicule by the mountain man. Francis’s orders had been specific: bring back a young buck. Getting up now could ruin it, but if the antelope had run off, it was stupid to stay down in the grass all afternoon. He waved the rag again.

That’s when the thought hit him: this was all a joke. Mr. Grimes was a great one for jokes. Like sending him down to wave a rag around in a bunch of grass, telling him, of all things, that the antelope would come to him. And he’d fallen for it—lock, stock, and barrel. He shook his head. Wouldn’t he ever learn?

Again he started to get up, and that’s when he saw the antelope. There were two of them. One was quite a bit larger than the other. They were both males, and they had seen Francis move.

Even so, they stood still, absolutely still, not even blinking their eyes.

Francis took in a shallow breath, held it, and leapt to his feet, swinging up his rifle. But as fast as he was, the antelope were faster. In the seeming twitch of two white tails, they were doing close to forty miles an hour, dead away from Francis.

He fired, remembering at the last second to aim at the smaller buck. It wasn’t a particularly difficult shot, but Francis was rattled, and he felt certain he’d missed. Yet the young antelope pitched forward and fell.