CHAPTER V 



A SHOT AT A MOUNTAIN SHEEP 



IN the fall of 1893 I was camped on the Little Mis- 

 souri, some ten miles below my ranch. The bottoms were 

 broad and grassy, and were walled in by curving rows of 

 high, steep bluffs. Back of them lay a mass of broken 

 country, in many places almost impassable for horses. 

 The wagon was drawn up on the edge of the fringe of 

 tall cottonwoods which stretched along the brink of the 

 shrunken river. The weather had grown cold, and at 

 night the frost gathered thickly on our sleeping-bags. 

 Great flocks of sandhill cranes passed overhead from time 

 to time, the air resounding with their strange, musical, 

 guttural clangor. 



For several days we had hunted perseveringly, but 

 without success, through the broken country. We had 

 come across tracks of mountain sheep, but not the animals 

 themselves, and the few blacktail which we had seen had 

 seen us first and escaped before we could get within shot. 

 The only thing killed had been a young whitetail, which 

 Lambert, who was with me, had knocked over by a very 

 pretty shot as we were riding through a long, heavily- 

 timbered bottom. Four men in stalwart health and tak- 

 ing much out-door exercise have large appetites, and the 

 flesh of the whitetail was almost gone. 



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