CHAPTER III. 



Wild Sheep. 



Do you know the world's white roof-tree, do you know that windy 

 rift, 



Where the baffling mountain-eddies chop and change? 



Do you know the long day's patience, belly-down on frozen drift, 



While the head of heads is feeding out of range? 



It, is there that I am going, where the boulders and the snow lie. 



With a trusty, nimble tracker that I know. 



I have sworn on oath, to keep it on the Horns of Ovis Poli 



And the Red Gods call me out and I must go. 



Kipling. 



No one who has not experienced it can form more than the faintest 

 idea of what "the long day's patience, belly-downi on frozen drift" while 

 waiting to get a shot at the "head of heads feeding out of range" 

 means. 



Day after day the hunter goes out, and climbs the steep and rocky 

 ascents to the sheep range : he crosses wind-swept uplands, white with 

 the driven snow: he scales treacherous precipices, jagged with needles 

 and spurs of crumbling granite : ever with his trusty glasses to his 

 eyes he keeps spying, spying, spying, till one day he sees 

 on some far distant ridge a ram bearing the "head of 

 heads" he is seeking. Immediately he is seized with an 

 overM^helming desire to have that head at all costs. If luck is 

 with him, he may secure it in the next two hours; or he may 

 have a long tiring day's work before he gets it; or it may take him 

 days and even weeks. jMen have gone mad in the pursuit of such a 

 head, other's have broken themselves in the endeavour to answer this, 

 the most powerful call of the Red Gods. Those who survive it and 

 come out triumphant will be changed men, — the Tnore so th« longer 

 and harder the chase. Perhaps the change will not be noticeable to 

 the outside world, but from that time on he will never look upon life 

 in quite the same way. The creature he followed and shot ^;\'ill become 



