The Mountain Sheep 185 



I watched a ewe with her lamb for the good part 

 of a morning. 



In the summer of 1885, as I have said, the 

 mountain sheep had not yet forsaken quite acces- 

 sible regions in Wyoming ; and very likely he still 

 came down low in most of his old haunts. The 

 small band which I saw was not many miles from 

 one of the largest ranches in that country, and 

 the creatures stood in full sight of a travelled 

 road, not at that time a stage-road, but one that 

 might be daily frequented by people riding or 

 people driving on their way north from Medi- 

 cine Bow into the immense cattle country of the 

 Platte and of the Powder River still farther 

 beyond, all the way to the Bighorn Mountains. 

 Those very mountains that bear the sheep's 

 name and were once so full of sheep as well as 

 of every other Rocky Mountain big game are 

 now sacked and empty. Hidden here and there, 

 some may exist yet, but as fugitives in a sanctu- 

 ary, not as free denizens of the wild. I saw three 

 years bring this change which thirty years had 

 not brought ; and in 1888 you would have 

 looked in vain, I think, for sheep on the road 

 from Medicine Bow to Fetterman. I found 

 them that year at no such stone's throw from 



