Mountain Goat 
The goats were not very far from us in a straight line, but it was 
along way around. They saw us and started on a rheumatic gallop, 
but only went a little way, and as they reached a turn, huddled 
up and looked back. We picked our way over toward their last 
place of abode, reaching the opposite side of the canyon by means 
wholly unsuited to nervous people. There was just snow enough to 
show their tracks, which led along scandalous precipices. The 
fever of pursuit was on my guide, and he walked uprightly in places 
where I became a quadruped. This was trying to his patience, for he 
caught glimpses of the goats which I by reason of slower progress, 
was denied. In about half an hour we came toa great chimney of 
rock in the path, and clinging with fingers and moccasins, he went 
around the face of it. . . . When I came out above him | saw he had 
the goats in a sort of a natural trap, and they were all bunched up 
against a rock which I thought could not be passed. The biggest 
billy stood faced about, his long white beard and petticoats making 
him look like the high priest of some heathen temple. ‘Don’t shoot; 
he fall down’ yelled my guide. At the sound of the voice the goat 
made a desperate attempt at the face of the rock, scrambling up at an 
obtuse angle, then standing on his hind legs and throwing his fore 
feet over, from right to left. I thought he surely would fall back but 
he did not. The smaller goats followed and in a moment they were 
gone. . . . We madea flank movement and perhaps a quarter of a 
mile from the first round-up we saw those four fool goats again, the 
big one and a small one looking back around the corner to see if we 
were really coming. Then we did shoot and curiosity broke up that 
family.” 
Mr.Owen Wister, in one of the Boone and Crockett Club’s volumes, 
gives an interesting account of ‘‘The White Goat and his Country.” 
Describing his first sight of the animal he says: ‘‘ We went cautiously 
along the narrow top of crumbling slate, where the pines 
were scarce and stunted, and had twisted themselves into 
corkscrews So they might grip the ground against the tearing force of 
storms. We came ona number of fresh goat-tracks in the snow or 
the soft shale. These are the reverse of the mountain sheep, the V 
which the hoofs make having its open end in the direction the animal 
is going. There seemed to be several, large and small; and the 
perverted animals invariably chose the sharpest slant they could find 
to walk on, often with a decent level just beside it that we were glad 
enough to have. If there was a precipice and a sound flat-top, they 
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