THE MOUNTAIN GOAT AT HOME 49 



humpy hindquarters wildly bobbing up and down among 

 the dead jack pines, as he ran for Bald Mountain. 



The two smaller goats held their course, and one 

 promptly disappeared. The other leaped across our 

 water-hole, and as it scrambled out of the gully near my 

 position, and paused for a few seconds to look back- 

 ward, instinctively I covered it with my rifle. But only 

 for an instant. " Come as they may," thought I, " my 

 first goat shall not be a small one!" And as the goat 

 turned and raced on up, my .303 Savage came down. 



We laughed long at the utter absurdity of three wild 

 goats actually breaking into the privacy of our camp, on 

 our first afternoon in Goatland. In the Elk Valley 

 Charlie Smith had promised me that we would camp 

 " right among the goats," and he had royally kept his 

 word. 



At evening, when we gathered round the camp-fire, 

 and counted up, we found that on our first day in Goat- 

 land, we had seen a total of fifty-three goats; and no one 

 had fired a shot. As for myself, I felt quite set up over 

 my presence of mind in not firing at the goat which I 

 had " dead to rights " after it had invaded our camp, 

 and which might have been killed as a measure of self- 

 defence. 



Our camp was pitched in a most commanding and 

 awe-inspiring spot. We were precisely at timber-line, 

 in a grassy hollow on the lowest summit between Bald 

 and Bird Mountains, on the north, and Phillips Peak, 

 on the south. From our tents the ground rose for sev- 

 eral hundred feet, like the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, 



