154 



RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



in them throughout the severe weather, while in the summer not a single 

 individual will be found in its winter haunts, all having then retired to the 

 high peaks. 



Sometimes big-horn wander widely for reasons unconnected with the 

 weather : all of those in a district may suddenly leave it and perhaps not 

 return for several years. Such is often the result of a district being settled, 

 or being exposed to incessant hunting. After a certain number of sheep 

 have been killed the remainder may all disappear, possibly one or two 

 small bands only staying behind ; but it is quite likely that two or three 

 years later the bulk of the vanished host will come back again. 



But where the region that they inhabit is cut off from the mountains 

 by settled districts, or by great stretches of plain and prairie, then the 

 sheep that dwell therein can make no such migrations. Thus they live 

 all the year round in the Little Missouri Bad Lands ; and though the dif- 

 ferent bands wander away and to and fro for scores of miles, especially in 

 the fall, for big-horn are far more restless than deer, yet they do not 

 shift their positions much on account of the season, and are often found in 

 precisely the same places both summer and winter. They thus bear with 

 indifference exposure to the extremes of heat and cold in a climate where 

 the yearly variation reaches the utmost possible limit, the thermometer 

 sometimes covering a range of a hundred and seventy degrees in the 

 course of twelve months. There are few spots on earth much hotter than 

 these Bad Lands during a spell of fierce summer weather, and, unlike the 

 deer, the sheep cannot seek the shade of the dense thickets. In the glare 

 of midday the naked angular hills yield no shelter whatever ; the barren 

 ravines between them turn into ovens beneath the brazen sun. The still, 

 lifeless, burning air stifles those who breathe it, while the parched and 

 heat-cracked canon walls are intolerable to the touch. 



But though the mountain sheep can stand this, and in fact do so with 

 even less protection than the deer, yet they certainly dislike it more than 

 do the latter. If mountains are near, they go up them far sooner and far 

 higher than the deer. On the other hand, they bear the winter blizzards 

 much better, caring less for shelter, and keeping their strength pretty well. 

 Ordinarily when in the Bad Lands they do not shift their ground save to 

 get on the lee side of the cliffs, though the deep snows of course drive 

 them from the mountains. A very heavy fall of snow, if they are high up 

 on the hills, occasionally forces a band to enter the evergreen woods 

 and make a regular yard, as deer do, beneath the overhanging cover-giv- 

 ing branches ; then they subsist on the scanty browse until they can get 

 back to pasture lands. But this is rare. Generally they stay in the 



