CHAPTER VII 

 MOUNTAIN GAME; THE WHITE GOAT 



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

 i ' 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 "busted" 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 tlje valley of 

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



(i33) 



