Mountain Sheep. 223 



which curls on the stalk into good hay, and on which the 

 cattle feed during winter. We galloped rapidly over the 

 hills, our blood gradually warming up from the motion ; 

 and soon came to the long wash-out, cutting down like a 

 miniature canyon for a space of two or three miles through 

 the bottom of a valley, into which the cowboy said he had 

 seen the bears go. One of us took one side and one the 

 other, and we rode along up wind, but neither the bears 

 nor any traces of them could we see ; at last, half a mile 

 ahead of us, two dark objects suddenly emerged from the 

 wash-out, and came out on the plain. For a second we 

 thought they were the quarry ; then we saw that they were 

 merely a couple of dark-colored ponies. The cowboy's 

 chapfallen face was a study ; he had seen, in the dim light, 

 the two ponies going down with their heads held near the 

 ground, and had mistaken them for bears (by no means 

 the unnatural mistake that it seems ; I have known an ex- 

 perienced hunter fire twice at a black calf in the late even- 

 ing, thinking it was a bear). He knew only too well the 

 merciless chaff to which he would be henceforth exposed ; 

 and a foretaste of which he at once received from my com- 

 panion. The ponies had strayed from the main herd, and 

 the cowboy was sent back to drive them to the home 

 corral, while Merrifield and myself continued our hunt. 



We had all day before us, and but twenty miles or so 

 to cover before reaching the hut where the buck-board was 

 to meet us ; but the course we intended to take was through 

 country so rough that no Eastern horse could cross it, and 

 even the hardy Western hunting-ponies, who climb like 

 goats, would have difficulty in keeping their feet. Our 



