IN THE ALASKA-YUKON GAMELANDS 



and six pellets were sent from Cap's gun, 

 all on the run, he was soon safe behind the 

 rim below us. 



I was of course all broken up at my absolute 

 carelessness. Cap felt it, too, very keenly. It 

 proved the correctness of the old shooting adage 

 — never be too sure nor too quick in shooting at 

 game. We both ran to the hump below, around 

 which he disappeared, but the mountain sceneiy 

 and a blue sky was all we had punctured. Later 

 we saw him slowly picking his way up a ridge a 

 mile to the south of us. His route would cross 

 our proposed path to the horses about a half 

 mile ahead, so, with the sole consolation that we 

 might meet him while returning, we allowed our- 

 selves to get swallowed in the gulches out of sight 

 of him. However, he must have seen us and 

 dropped back into the timber, as subsequent 

 events proved. After an hour's hard climbing 

 and down-sliding, too, we reached the horses at 

 5 o'clock at the edge of timber, and were soon 

 traveling camp-ward. It felt good to sit in the 

 saddle again after so much hard climbing and 

 scouting. We were both on the lookout for our 

 ram while descending thru the timber. We 

 hadn't traveled a quarter of a mile before Cap, 

 who was leading, gave a motion of silence, and 

 we slid off our horses. With the glasses I saw the 

 ram in the small timber. He was huddled under 

 a spruce that stood amidst the young balm of 

 gilead trees. Were it snowing, or raining, one 



n 4 



