The White Goat and his Country 



more honorable. He looked white, and huge, 

 and strange ; and somehow I had a sense of 

 personality about him more vivid than any 

 since I watched my first silver-tip lift a rot- 

 ten log, and, sitting on his hind legs, make 

 a breakfast on beetles, picking them off the 

 log with one paw. 



I fired, aiming behind the goat's head. He 

 did not rise, but turned his head round. The 

 white bead of my Lyman sight had not showed 

 well against the white animal, and I thought I 

 had missed him. Then I fired again, and he 

 rolled very little — six inches — and lay quiet. 

 He could not have been more than fifty yards 

 away, and my first shot had cut through the 

 back of his neck and buried itself in mortal 

 places, and the second in his head merely made 

 death instantaneous. Shooting him after he 

 had become alarmed might have lost him over 

 the edge; even if a first shot had been fatal, 

 it could not have been fatal soon enough. 

 Two struggles on that snow would have sent 

 him sliding through space. As it was, we 

 had a steep, unsafe scramble down through 

 the snow to where he lay stretched out on 

 the little shelf by the tree. 



41 



