CLIMBING FOR WHITE SHEEP 223 



away. We crouched immediately and examined them 

 with our glasses. One had larger horns than any we had 

 yet seen. The other's were nearly as good. Having 

 once assured ourselves that the animals were asleep and 

 had not seen us, we crawled back as quickly as we could 

 to the slope we had left and now thus concealed by the 

 swelling of the ground, I took rifle in hand and crawled 

 toward the Httle ridge in the surface of the hill which 

 shut them out from our vision. This brought me within 

 a hundred yards of the animals. As I lay there beside 

 a small boulder, one of the sheep woke and jumped to 

 his feet. Possibly a little swirl of the wind had given 

 him a whiff of me. As he stood on the alert, tm-ning 

 slowly this way and that, I had good opportunity of 

 examining his head with the small glasses which hung 

 always about my neck, and saw that the horns made 

 sHghtly more than a complete circle and that they were 

 symmetrical and unbroken. The other sheep also rose 

 and stood uncertain what to do. 



Bill had crawled nearly to where I was and advised 

 not shooting at the second of the sheep as we might get 

 better ones; but the first, at any rate, was destined to be 

 bagged. At the crack of the rifle he humped himself 

 together and stood, swayed and fell over backwards, 

 rolling head over tail about thirty yards dowTi the hill 

 before lying dead. 



The other was astonished at his mate's performance. 

 Instead of taking flight at once he stood and looked 

 curiously at the dying animal until it stopped and lay 

 motionless. Then, somewhat perplexed, but apparently 

 not frightened, he began to walk slowly toward me. I 

 considered him carefully. The horns were not so heavy 

 as those of the first sheep, but they were nearly as long. 



