CHAPTER VII 

 MOUNTAIN GAME; THE WHITE GOAT 



T ATE one August I started on a trip to the Big 

 J Hole Basin, in western Montana, to hunt white 

 goats. With me went a friend of many hunts, John 

 Willis, a tried mountain man. 



We left the railroad at the squalid little hamlet 

 of Divide, where we hired a team and wagon from 

 a &quot;busted&quot; granger, suspected of being a Mormon, 

 who had failed, even with the help of irrigation, in 

 raising a crop. The wagon was in fairly good or 

 der; the harness was rotten, and needed patching 

 with ropes ; while the team consisted of two spoiled 

 horses, overworked and thin, but full of the devil 

 the minute they began to pick up condition. How 

 ever, on the frontier one soon grows to accept little 

 facts of this kind with bland indifference ; and Wil 

 lis was not only an expert teamster, but possessed 

 that inexhaustible fertility of resource and unfail 

 ing readiness in an emergency so characteristic of 

 the veteran of the border. Through hard experi 

 ence he had become master of plainscraft and wood 

 craft, skilled in all frontier lore. 



For a couple of days we jogged up the valley of 

 the Big Hole River, along the mail road. At night 



(i33) 



