248 The White Goat 



talked with any hunter who had seen him in 

 Wyoming, although (and here again I will re- 

 enforce my own experience with Mr. Brown's) 

 there seems to be a sort of goat tradition in 

 Wyoming, here and there. This myth is, to be 

 sure, highly sublimated. You don't hear that 

 goat used to be upon this or that definite moun- 

 tain, or that So-and-So saw a man who saw a 

 goat, or whose wife or uncle saw one; it never 

 comes as near you as that ; yet still faintly in the 

 air of the Continental Divide there hovers this 

 vague rumor of the animal. 



If he was ever in Wyoming as a domiciled 

 resident, who shall say why he departed ? Why 

 is he not to-day upon the Washakie Needle, or 

 in the abrupt country where heads Green River, 

 or among the formidable Tetons, since to-day he 

 is but a little farther west of the Tetons, in the 

 Saw Tooth Range ? And why, if man (or sheep) 

 drove him from these Wyoming peaks, has he 

 not been driven from the peaks of Idaho ? Dif- 

 ference in neither heat, nor cold, nor humidity, 

 nor accessibility, can be the explanation, for there 

 is no difference; and as for difference in food, I 

 find no suggestion of it in the pages of the 

 authorities. 



