176 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



of the professional hunters has ever killed one ; and I know of but one or 

 two Eastern sportsmen who can boast a goat's head as a trophy. But 

 this will soon cease to be the case ; for the Canadian Pacific Railway has 

 opened the haunts where the goats are most plentiful, and any moderately 

 adventurous and hardy rifleman can be sure of getting one by taking a 

 little time, and that, too, whether he is a skilled hunter or not, since at 

 present the game is not difficult to approach. The white goat will be 

 common long after the elk has vanished, and it has already outlasted 

 the buffalo. Few sportsmen henceforth indeed, hardly any will ever 

 boast a buffalo head of their own killing ; but the number of riflemen who 

 can place to their credit the prized white fleeces and jet-black horns will 

 steadily increase. 



The Missourian, during his career as a Rocky Mountain hunter, had 

 killed five white goats. The first he had shot near Canyon City, Colorado, 

 and never having heard of any such animal before had concluded afterward 

 that it was one of a flock of recently imported Angora goats, and accord- 

 ingly, to avoid trouble, buried it where it lay ; and it was not until fourteen 

 years later, when he came up to the Cceur d'Alene and shot another, that 

 he became aware of what he had killed. He described them as being bold, 

 pugnacious animals, not easily startled, and extremely tenacious of life. 

 Once he had set a large hound at one which he came across while 

 descending an ice-swollen river in early spring. The goat made no 

 attempt to flee or to avoid the hound, but coolly awaited its approach and 

 killed it with one wicked thrust of the horns ; for the latter are as sharp as 

 needles, and are used for stabbing, not butting. Another time he caught 

 a goat in a bear trap set on a game trail. Its leg was broken, and he had 

 to pack it out on pony-back, a two-days' journey, to the settlement; yet 

 in spite of such rough treatment it lived a week after it got there, when, 

 unfortunately, the wounded leg mortified. It fought most determinedly, 

 but soon became reconciled to captivity, eating with avidity all the grass 

 it was given, recognizing its keeper, and grunting whenever he brought it 

 food or started to walk away before it had had all it wished. The goats 

 he had shot lived in ground where the walking was tiresome to the last 

 degree, and where it was almost impossible not to make a good deal of 

 noise ; and nothing but their boldness and curiosity enabled him ever to 

 kill any. One he shot while waiting at a pass for deer. The goat, an old 

 male, came up, and fairly refused to leave the spot, walking round in the 

 underbrush and finally mounting a great fallen log, where he staid snort- 

 ing and stamping angrily until the Missourian lost patience and killed him. 



For three or four days I hunted steadily and without success, and it 



