American Big-Game Hunting 
He was a fair-sized billy, and very heavy. 
The little lifting and shoving we had to do 
in skinning him was hard work. The horns 
were black, slender, slightly spreading, curved 
backward, pointed, and smooth. They mea- 
sured six inches round the base, and the dis- 
tance from one point to the other, measured 
down one horn, along the skull, and up the 
other, was twenty-one andahalf inches. The 
hoofs were also black and broad and large, 
wholly unlike a tame goat’s. The hair was 
extraordinarily thick, long, and of a weather- 
beaten white; the eye large and deep-brown. 
I had my invariable attack of remorse on 
looking closely at the poor harmless old gen- 
tleman, and wondered what achievement, after 
all, could be discerned in this sort of surprise 
and murder. We did not think of securing 
any of his plentiful fat, but with head and hide 
alone climbed back up the ticklish slant, hung 
the trophies on a tree ina gap on the camp 
side of the ridge, and continued our hunt. It 
was not ten o'clock yet, and we had taken 
one hour to skin the goat. We now hunted 
the higher ridges behind camp until 1 P. M., 
finding tracks that made it seem as if a num- 
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