The White Goat and his Country 
more honorable. He looked white, and huge, 
and strange; and somehow I had a sense of 
personality about him more vivid than any 
since I watched my first silver-tip lift a rot- 
ten log, and, sitting on his hind legs, make 
a breakfast on beetles, picking them off the 
log with one paw. 
I fired, aiming behind the goat’s head. He 
did not rise, but turned his head round. The 
white bead of my Lyman sight had not showed 
well against the white animal, and I thought I 
had missed him. Then I fired again, and he 
rolled very little—six inches—and lay quiet. 
He could not have been more than fifty yards 
away, and my first shot had cut through the 
back of his neck and buried itself in mortal 
places, and the second in his head merely made 
death instantaneous. Shooting him after he 
had become alarmed might have lost him over 
the edge; even if a first shot had been fatal, 
it could not have been fatal soon enough. 
Two struggles on that snow would have sent 
him sliding through space. As it was, we 
had a steep, unsafe scramble down through 
the snow to where he lay stretched out on 
the little shelf by the tree. 
41 
