American Big-Game Hunting 



He was a fair-sized billy, and very heavy. 

 The little lifting and shoving we had to do 

 in skinning him was hard work. The horns 

 were black, slender, slightly spreading, curved 

 backward, pointed, and smooth. They mea- 

 sured six inches round the base, and the dis- 

 tance from one point to the other, measured 

 down one horn, along the skull, and up the 

 other, was twenty- one and a half inches. The 

 hoofs were also black and broad and large, 

 wholly unlike a tame goat's. The hair was 

 extraordinarily thick, long, and of a weather- 

 beaten white; the eye large and deep-brown. 



I had my invariable attack of remorse on 

 looking closely at the poor harmless old gen- 

 tleman, and wondered what achievement, after 

 all, could be discerned in this sort of surprise 

 and murder. We did not think of securing 

 any of his plentiful fat, but with head and hide 

 alone climbed back up the ticklish slant, hung 

 the trophies on a tree in a gap on the camp 

 side of the ridge, and continued our hunt. It 

 was not ten o'clock yet, and we had taken 

 one hour to skin the goat. We now hunted 

 the higher ridges behind camp until i p. m., 

 finding tracks that made it seem as if a num- 



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