THE SPIRAL-HORNED MARKHOOR. 141 



being above our game, and to great caution, we contrived to pass the dangerous space with- 

 out being detected. 



Afterwards all was plain sailing, and in a short time I reached a ridge behind which 

 the Markhoor were lying when last seen. 



Looking carefully over, I saw a Markhoor standing about seventy yards off. It struck 

 me that there was something unusual about his horns, but not liking to raise my head any 

 higher to look for the other, I fired at the one in sight. He rushed down into the ravine 

 in an evidently nearly helpless state, and then the second Markhoor gave me a fair running 

 shot as he passed along the hill-side opposite to me. To complete the bad luck which had 

 been haunting me, my rifle hung fire badly, and a miss was the result. 



Meanwhile, the wounded Markhoor, whose shoulder was badly smashed, had scrambled 

 down the ravine until he reached a larger one whose bed was filled with hardened snow. 

 Down this he rolled and slid until the most active of my attendants overtook him, and 

 managed to hold on till we arrived, although the task was almost beyond his strength. The 

 buck was a fine old fellow, with gnarled horns, the right one of which measured forty-seven 

 and a half inches. The left horn was seriously deformed, having apparently been broken off 

 by an accident years before, after which it had acquired a peculiar lateral twist. 



Urgent business recalled me from my hunting grounds a day or two afterwards, but 

 the succeeding year but one saw me on the old spot in the month of September. The day 

 I reached my old camp, after seeing the tents pitched in a secluded place, I went out in the 

 afternoon on the chance of getting a shot in the immediate vicinity. I had not gone very 

 far before we discovered Markhoor feeding some way below us in tolerably open forest. 

 The hill-side was here intersected by numerous parallel ravines, running down to the rocky 

 stream which drained the valley. These ravines were more or less clothed with bushes, 

 while the ridges between them were more sparsely sprinkled with pines and other trees of 

 considerable size. Descending towards the Markhoor I soon found myself most favorably 

 placed behind capital shelter, immediately above where the Markhoor were still quietly 

 browsing on the bushes. I could only see two, and it was extremely difficult to make out 

 which had the best horns ; so, after waiting for some time, I fired at one which offered a clear 

 shot. The smoke, which hung in the forest, prevented me from seeing the result, but my 

 Shikari said that the Markhoor had fallen. 



I quickly reloaded, but it was some time before I could see any of the others, and 

 when at length four Markhoor went away below me to the right, where I had least expected 

 them, I was in such an awkward position that I missed an easy shot. Directly afterwards 

 another Markhoor, evidently lame, entered the bushes immediately below me, and as soon 

 as he reappeared, I saw that he had a broken foreleg. Another shot or two finished him, 

 and I thought at first that this was the one first fired at, but my Shikari declared that it was 

 dead, — and so it proved. My first bullet had passed through the heart of the Markhoor I 

 aimed at, and broken the foreleg of another which was hidden in the bushes just beyond. 



Both heads were fair specimens, the first measuring forty one and a half, and the second 

 forty inches. 



