244 FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS 



Deer, and wearing sucli wonderful horns that he would 

 be a marked animal in any country. So heavy are 

 these horns that nature does not oblige the female to 

 carry them, giving her a much smaller pair. It is suf- 

 ficient for the males, who wage war with each other 

 and upon beasts of prey, to have such weapons. Then, 

 too, the small horns of the female tell the hunter who. 

 she is, and if he is a true sportsman he will never shoot 

 her or her young, unless he is either starving or needs 

 her veri/ badly to complete some family group in a 

 museum. 



"The coat of tlie Bighorn is of a bluish dirt gray, the 

 rump is whitish, thick and fleecy beneath, thicker on 

 the neck and shoulders than on the flanks, and thatched 

 with a brittle, strawlike outer coat. In fact, at a dis- 

 tance, if he is standing, the whole animal looks white, 

 but in lying down seems to melt suddenly into his sur- 

 roundings. He is not only a gamey, alert animal, but 

 looks it ; he has the air of a mountain lover, whose great- 

 est joy is to climb a high peak and turn his straw-colored 

 eyes toward the view. This habit of course makes him 

 doubly hard to kill, for the hunter not only has to 

 climb, but the Sheep can see ever} thing from his rocky 

 outpost, and the chances are that, unless the sportsman 

 crawls on the ground for miles from cover to cover, 

 making himself as flat as a Woodchuck, when he 

 arrives within shooting distance of where the Sheep 

 was, he will see it calmly watching him from another 

 pinnacle a mile further up." 



" I suppose they can jump just like Panthers and get 

 over places that people couldn't cross," said Rap. 



'' They are agile and quick runners and can jump 



