A Trip After Mountain Sheep 259 



from Manitou's back to the buckboard. A very 

 few minutes sufficed to pack up our bedding and 

 provisions, and we started home. Merrifield and I 

 rode on ahead, not sparing the horses; but before 

 we got home the storm had burst, and a furious 

 blizzard blew in our teeth as we galloped along the 

 last mile of the river bottom, before coming to the 

 home ranch house ; and as we warmed our stiffened 

 limbs before the log fire, I congratulated myself 

 upon the successful outcome of what I knew would 

 be the last hunting trip I should take during that 

 season. 



The death of this ram was accomplished without 

 calling for any very good shooting on our part. He 

 was standing still, less than a hundred yards off, 

 when the shot was fired; and we came across him 

 so close merely by accident. Still, we fairly de- 

 served our luck, for we had hunted with the most 

 patient and painstaking care from dawn till night- 

 fall for the better part of three days, spending most 

 of the time in climbing at a smart rate of speed up 

 sheer cliffs and over rough and slippery ground. 

 Still-hunting the big-horn is always a toilsome and 

 laborious task, and the very bitter weather during 

 which we had been out had not lessened the diffi- 

 culty of the work, though in the cold it was much 

 less exhausting than it would have been to have 

 hunted across the same ground in summer. No 

 other kind of hunting does as much to bring out 

 the good qualities, both moral and physical, of the 

 sportsmen who follow it. If a man keeps at it, it 



