176 CAMP FIRES IN THE YUKON 



The first was nowhere to be seen, and had prob- 

 ably rolled down thousands of feet; the wounded 

 one, in spite of being badly hit, had climbed down 

 two hundred yards of lava precipice, where the 

 writer could not possibly follow without a rope, so 

 I put an end to him with a shot from above and he 

 rolled down into the unknown. We sat down to 

 look at the country and try to fix in our minds the 

 place where my game had vanished, in order to get 

 them from below, and as we smoked our pipes we 

 located two more goats over a ridge that edged a 

 canyon half a mile away; but we did not disturb 

 these, deciding to reserve them for Wolcott, who 

 came up to us an hour later. He had followed the 

 goat along a narrow ledge for a mile, and the ledge 

 came to an abrupt ending, and the goat had disap- 

 peared. Wolcott could not go forward, and after 

 several attempts found he could neither climb up 

 nor down the rocky face, so he retraced his steps 

 and, looking very weary and dripping with perspir- 

 ation, came to us. 



We told him of the two goats we nad reserved 

 for him, but they had vanished over the ridge into 

 the canyon, so with Hayden he started to the sum- 

 mit, in order to climb around the end of the canyon, 

 while Baker and myself were to go after my game 

 and skin out the heads. We started down the steep 

 slope, and had gone about two hundred feet when 

 we found a sheer drop into space which interested 



