76 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
tain top, these hardy dwellers of the summit 
could long be indifferent to deep snow or to its 
deliberate melting. 
They bunched in the farthest corner of their 
wind-cleared place and eyed me curiously while 
I went by. I back-tracked their wallowed 
trail to the nook in which they had endured the 
three-day storm. This place was nearly a mile 
distant, but over most of the way to the snowless 
pasture the sheep had travelled on the very edge 
of the plateau, from which wind and gravity 
had cleared most of the snow. They had stood 
through the storm bunched closely against a 
leeward plateau wall several yards below the 
summit. The snow had eddied down and buried 
them deeply. It had required a long and severe 
struggle to get out of this snow and back through 
it to the summit, as their footmarks and body 
impressions plainly showed. 
This storm was a general one and deeply 
covered several states. It was followed by two 
-weeks of cold. For several hundred miles along 
this and other ranges the deer and the elk had a 
starving time, while the numerous flocks of 
sheep on summits escaped serious affliction. 
Evidently mountain sheep know their range 
and understand how to fight the game of self- 
preservation in the mountain snows. ‘The fact 
that sheep spend their winters on the mountain 
