178 RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



light lunch in our pockets, and go straight up the mountain sides for 

 hours at a time, varying it by skirting the broad, terrace-like ledges, or 

 by clambering along the cliff crests. The climbing was very hard. The 

 slope was so steep that it was like going upstairs ; now through loose 

 earth, then through a shingle of pebbles or sand, then over rough rocks, 

 and again over a layer of pine needles as smooth and slippery as glass, 

 while brittle, dry sticks that snapped at a touch, and loose stones that 

 rattled down if so much as brushed, strewed the ground everywhere, the 

 climber stumbling and falling over them and finding it almost absolutely 

 impossible to proceed without noise, unless at a rate of progress too slow 

 to admit of getting anywhere. Often, too, we would encounter dense 

 underbrush, perhaps a thicket of little burnt balsams, as prickly and brittle 

 as so much coral ; or else a heavy growth of laurel, all the branches point- 

 ing downward, and to be gotten through only by main force. Over all 

 grew the vast evergreen forest, except where an occasional cliff jutted 

 out, or where there were great land-slides, each perhaps half a mile long 

 and a couple of hundred yards across, covered with loose slates or granite 

 bowlders. 



We always went above the domain of the deer, and indeed saw few 

 evidences of life. Once or twice we came to the round foot-prints of cou- 

 gars, which are said to be great enemies of the goats, but we never caught 

 a glimpse of the sly beasts themselves. Another time I shot a sable from 

 a spruce, up which the little fox-headed animal had rushed with the agility 

 of a squirrel. There were plenty of old tracks of bear and elk, but no new 

 ones ; and occasionally we saw the foot-marks of the great timber wolf. 



But the trails at which we looked with the most absorbed interest were 

 those that showed the large, round hoof-marks of the white goats. They 

 had worn deep paths to certain clay licks in the slides, which they must 

 have visited often in the early spring, for the trails were little traveled 

 when we were in the mountains during September. These clay licks 

 were mere holes in the banks, and were in spring-time visited by other 

 animals besides goats ; there were old deer trails to them. The clay 

 seemed to contain something that both birds and beasts were fond of, for 

 I frequently saw flocks of cross-bills light in the licks and stay there for 

 many minutes at a time, scratching the smooth surface with their little 

 claws and bills. The goat trails led away in every direction from the licks, 

 but usually went up-hill, zigzagging or in a straight line, and continually 

 growing fainter as they went farther off, where the animals scattered to 

 their feeding-grounds. In the spring-time the goats are clad with a dense 

 coat of long white wool, and there were shreds and tufts of this on all the 



