76 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 



tain top, these hardy dwellers of the summit 

 could long be indifferent to deep snow or to its 

 deliberate melting. 



They bunched in the farthest corner of their 

 wind-cleared place and eyed me curiously while 

 I went by. I back-tracked their wallowed 

 trail to the nook in which they had endured the 

 three-day storm. This place was nearly a mile 

 distant, but over most of the way to the snowless 

 pasture the sheep had travelled on the very edge 

 of the plateau, from which wind and gravity 

 had cleared most of the snow. They had stood 

 through the storm bunched closely against a 

 leeward plateau wall several yards below the 

 summit. The snow had eddied down and buried 

 them deeply. It had required a long and severe 

 struggle to get out of this snow and back through 

 it to the summit, as their footmarks and body 

 impressions plainly showed. 



This storm was a general one and deeply 

 covered several states. It was followed by two 

 weeks of cold. For several hundred miles along 

 this and other ranges the deer and the elk had a 

 starving time, while the numerous flocks of 

 sheep on summits escaped serious affliction. 



Evidently mountain sheep know their range 

 and understand how to fight the game of self- 

 preservation in the mountain snows. The fact 

 that sheep spend their winters on the mountain 



