54 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



forward to meet them, and sure enough they came as I 

 expected, and just as I was re-loading too. I was ready 

 with one barrel, and shot a third. Had I thought of my 

 pistol I might have brought down a fourth, for one stood 

 not twenty paces from me." 



" What I" I asked, " do you carry a pistol with 

 you V 



" Yes, always," he replied, drawing a double-bar- 

 relled revolver (with four barrels) out of his pocket: "one 

 must always be prepared for whatever may happen ; 

 and with that, if I only have a place to lean against, I 

 should not mind one or two." 



" But do the poachers attack you if you do not begin 

 with them f" 



" Their hearts are set on the Jagers' guns : their own 

 are not good for much, and they know that ours are, and 

 they would rather get one of them than almost anything. 

 And they'd give us a good thrashing too, if they could," 

 he added, laughing ; " and you know to be half-beaten 

 to death is not so very agreeable. Besides, if you meet 

 with such fellows in a hut, where everything is so close 

 together, and there is little room to move, you cannot 

 do much with a rifle, it 's too long — in close quarters like 

 that a pistol may do good service." 



" But how did you bring down your three cha- 

 mois ?" 



" One I put in my rucksack, and the other two, as 

 there was snow on the ground, I dragged down. On the 

 Wendelstein once I shot a chamois, and afterwards a roe- 

 buck. The chamois I put in the sack, and the buck across 

 it over my shoulders. One can carry almost anything so, 

 and capitally too." 



We now came to the broad path or mountain way that 

 leads up the Miesing, made to enable the woodcutters to 



