148 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



sheep. On those black and blasted peaks and plains of lava, 

 where nature was working hard to replant with desert vegeta- 

 tion a vast volcanic area, we found herds of short-haired, 

 undersized big-horn sheep, struggling to hold their own against 

 terrific heat, short food and long thirst. It is a burning shame 

 that since our discovery of those sheep hunters of a dozen 

 different kinds have almost exterminated them. 



We saw one band of seventeen sheep, close to Pinacate 

 Peak, all so utterly ignorant of the ways of men that they 

 practically refused to be frightened at our presence and our 

 silent guns. We watched them a long time, forgetful of the 

 flight of time. They were not shrewdly suspicious of danger. 

 They fed, and frolicked, and dozed, as much engrossed in their 

 indolence as if the world contained no dangers for them 



One day Mr. John M. Phillips and I shot two rams, for the 

 Carnegie Museum; and the next morning I had the most 

 remarkable lesson that I ever learned in mountain sheep 

 psychology. 



Early on that November morning Mr. Jeff Milton and I 

 left our chilly lair in a lava ravine, and most foolishly left both 

 our rifles at our camp. Hobbling along on foot we led a pack 

 mule over half a mile of rough and terrible lava to a dead sheep. 

 There we quickly skinned the animal, packed the skin and 

 a horned head upon the upper deck of our mule, and started 

 back to camp, leading our assistant. Half way back, we 

 looked westward across an eighth of a mile of rough, black 

 lava, and saw standing on a low point a fine big-horn ram. 

 He stood in a statuesque attitude, facing us, and fixedly gazing 

 at us. He was trying to make out what we were, and to 

 determine why a perfectly good pair of sheep horns should 

 grow out of the back of a sorrel mule! Ethically he had a 

 right to be puzzled. 



Mr. Milton and I were greatly annoyed by the absence of 

 our rifles; and he proposed that we should leave the mule 

 where he stood, go back to our camp, get our guns, and kill 



