Kragf, the Kootenay Ram 



were healthier and much wiser than had been 

 the Bighorn of other days, and being so, their 

 numbers steadily increased. 



Five years had made some changes in Krag's 

 appearance, but his body was square and round 

 and muscular as ever ; his perfect legs seemed 

 unchanged in form or in force ; his head was as 

 before, with the heart-shaped white patch on 

 his nose ; and his jewel eyes blazed as of old. 

 But his horns, how they had changed! Before 

 they were uncommon ; now they were unique. 

 The massive sweeps — the graven records of his 

 life — were now a circle and a quarter, and they 

 told of years of joy and years of strife, and one 

 year, tallied in a narrow band of dark and 

 wrinkled horn, told of the year when all the 

 mountains were scourged by the epidemic of 

 grip — when numbers of Lambs and their mo- 

 thers died ; when many strong Rams suc- 

 cumbed ; when Krag himself had been smitten, 

 but recovered, thanks to his stalwart growth 

 and native force, and after a time of misery had 

 shown no traces of those wretched months, 

 except in the yearly growth of horn. For that 

 year, 1889, it was barely an inch in width, plain 



67 



