Mountain Goat 



The goats were not very far from us in a straight line, but it was 

 a long way around. They saw us and started on a rheumatic gallop, 

 but only went a little way, and as they reached a turn, huddled 

 up and looked back. We picked our way over toward their last 

 place of abode, reaching the opposite side of the canyon by means 

 wholly unsuited to nervous people. There was just snow enough to 

 show their tracks, which led along scandalous precipices. The 

 fever of pursuit was on my guide, and he walked uprightly in places 

 where I became a quadruped. This was trying to his patience, for he 

 caught glimpses of the goats which I by reason of slower progress, 

 was denied. In about half an hour we came to a great chimney of 

 rock in the path, and clinging with fingers and moccasins, he went 

 around the face of it. ... When I came out above him 1 saw he had 

 the goats in a sort of a natural trap, and they were all bunched up 

 against a rock which 1 thought could not be passed. The biggest 

 billy stood faced about, his long white beard and petticoats making 

 him look like the high priest of some heathen temple. ' Don't shoot; 

 he fall down ' yelled my guide. At the sound of the voice the goat 

 made a desperate attempt at the face of the rock, scrambling up at an 

 obtuse angle, then standing on his hind legs and throwing his fore 

 feet over, from right to left. I thought he surely would fall back but 

 he did not. The smaller goats followed and in a moment they were 

 gone. . . . We made a flank movement and perhaps a quarter of a 

 mile from the first round-up we saw those four fool goats again, the 

 big one and a small one looking back around the corner to see if we 

 were really coming. Then we did shoot and curiosity broke up that 

 family." 



Mr.Owen Wister,in one of the Boone and Crockett Club's volumes, 

 gives an interesting account of "The White Goat and his Country." 

 Describing his first sight of the animal he says: " We went cautiously 

 along the narrow top of crumbling slate, where the pines 

 were scarce and stunted, and had twisted themselves into 

 corkscrews so they might grip the ground against the tearing force of 

 storms. We came on a number of fresh goat-tracks in the snow or 

 the soft shale. These are the reverse of the mountain sheep, the V 

 which the hoofs make having its open end in the direction the animal 

 is going. There seemed to be several, large and small; and the 

 perverted animals invariably chose the sharpest slant they could find 

 to walk on, often with a decent level just beside it that we were glad 

 enough to have. If there was a precipice and a sound flat-top, they 



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