A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



Immediately work was started skinning both sheep heads. 

 While the party, loaded with heads and meat, was plodding 

 back to camp in the rain, which by this time had increased to 

 a steady pour, we met several feeding porcupines and flushed a 

 large flock of ptarmigan. It was long after dark when we 

 reached the roaring blaze and the appetizing supper which the 

 cook had prepared for us. 



The next morning we spent in skinning and preparing the 

 heads, and in the afternoon we moved the outfit about ten 

 miles farther up the valley. From the camp that evening we 

 could see a number of goats perched on the opposite side of 

 the canon, and at daylight the next morning discovered the 

 near-by slopes dotted with feeding sheep. A careful scrutiny 

 of these with the glasses revealed them to be young rams, ewes, 

 or lambs, so we again moved ten miles farther up the cafion, 

 seeing numerous moose-tracks, and killing the usual porcupine 

 and some ptarmigan and grouse en route. 



After a hasty luncheon, Howe, Mac, and I started up the sides 

 of the nearest mountain, leaving the others to make camp. 

 An hour later -found us on the summit. We followed the bare, 

 rocky tops of the mountains' for many miles, and although we 

 saw magnificent vistas of peak and glacier, and numerous 

 goats plastered on the sides of distant cliffs, it was almost dark 

 before Mac discovered six large rams feeding in a grassy basin 

 of a remote cafion. As an unfavorable wind and the diminish- 

 ing light would have made a successful stalk impossible that 

 evening, we started toward camp, reaching it about ten o'clock. 

 The next morning we started up the mountain-side at daylight. 

 Three hours later found us gazing from a wind-swept pinnacle 

 down into the basin which we had visited the evening before, 

 but it was half an hour before we made out two rams grazing 

 in a small swale far below us. They were in a place so hard 

 to approach and the wind was so variable that, after two hours' 

 careful and dangerous stalk, the hunt terminated in a futile 



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