The Mountain Sheep 189 



a thunder-storm which cannot be chronicled here 

 because it happened on one of the days when we 

 found elk, but most lamentably missed our sheep. 

 Missing a sheep, let me say, is of all missing the 

 most thorough that I know. 



Encouragement, false encouragement, had come 

 to us after our very first night in camp by the 

 Washakie Needle. The next night we had wild 

 mutton for supper. That initial day, Wednesday, 

 August twenty-ninth, brought us this sweet luck, 

 sweet not alone in its promise of more (for the 

 country was evidently full of sheep), but almost 

 equally because of late, during our perilous jour- 

 ney, we had come down to bacon. Now, to be a 

 hunting party, to be in the Shoshone Mountains 

 in August, 1888, and to be eating bacon, was to be 

 humiliated ; only our hard travelling that allowed 

 no attending to other business could excuse such 

 a bill of fare ; hence did our pride and our stom- 

 achs hail this wild mutton. There was not much 

 of him to hail : he was a young ram ; and be- 

 tween six of us, after bacon . . . need I say 

 more .? 



It had been my intention, until this very para- 

 graph, to skip what happened next day. But I 

 am growing confidential ; these shall be the con- 



