CHAPTER V
GOATS
As we were finishing breakfast my eye was attracted to a snow speck onthe mountainside some two thousand feet above us and slightly westwardthat somehow looked to me different from other snow specks. For nearly aminute I stared at it through my glasses. At last the speck moved. Thegame was in sight!
We drew straws for the shot, and Fisher won. Then we began our climb. Itwas the same old story of pumping lungs and pounding hearts; but withthe incentive before us we made excellent time. A shallow ravine and afringe of woods afforded us the cover we needed. At the end of an hourand a half we crawled out of our ravine and to the edge of the trees.There across a steep canon and perhaps four hundred yards away were thegoats, two of them, lying on the edge of small cliffs. We could see themvery plainly, but they were too far for a sure shot. After examiningthem to our satisfaction we wormed our way back.
"The only sure way," I insisted, "is to climb clear to the top of theridge, go along it on the other side until we are above and beyond thegoats, and then to stalk them down hill."
That meant a lot more hard work; but in the end the plan was adopted.We resumed our interminable and toilsome climbing.
The ridge proved to be of the knife-edge variety, and covered with snow.From a deep, wide, walled-in basin on the other side rose the howling oftwo brush wolves. We descended a few feet to gain safe concealment;walked as rapidly as possible to the point above the goats; and thenwith the utmost caution began our descent.
In the last two hundred yards is the essence of big-game stalking. Thehunter must move noiselessly, he must keep concealed; he must determine_at each step_ just what the effect of that step has been in the mattersof noise and of altering the point of view. It is necessary to spysharply, not only from the normal elevation of a man's shoulders, butalso stooping to the waist line, and even down to the knees. An animalis just as suspicious of legs as of heads; and much more likely to seethem.
The shoulder of the mountain here consisted of a series of steep grasscurves ending in short cliff jump-offs. Scattered and stunted trees andtree groups grew here and there. In thirty minutes we had made ourdistance and recognized the fact that our goats must be lying at thebase of the next ledge. Motioning Harry to the left and Fisher to thefront, I myself moved to the right to cut off the game should it run inthat direction. Ten seconds later I heard Fisher shoot; then Harryopened up; and in a moment a goat ran across the ledge fifty yards belowme. With a thrill of the greatest satisfaction I dropped the gold beadof my front sight on his shoulder!
The bullet knocked him off the edge of the cliff. He fell, struck thesteep grass slope, and began to roll. Over and over and over he went,gathering speed like a snowball, getting smaller and smaller until hedisappeared in the brush far below, a tiny spot of white.
No one can appreciate the feeling of relaxed relief that filled me. Hardand dangerous climbs, killing work, considerable hardship and discomforthad at length their reward. I could now take a rest. The day was young,and I contemplated with something like rapture a return to camp, and agood puttery day skinning out that goat. In addition I was suffering nowfrom a splitting headache, the effects of incipient snow-blindness, andwas generally pretty wobbly.
And then my eye wandered to the left, whence that goat had come. I saw alarge splash of blood; at a spot _before_ I had fired! It was tooevident that the goat had already been wounded by Fisher; and therefore,by hunter's law, belonged to him!
I set my teeth and turned up the mountain to regain the descent we hadjust made. At the knife-edge top I stopped for a moment to get my breathand to survey the country. Diagonally across the basin where the wolveswere howling, half way down the ridge running at right angles to my own,I made out two goats. They were two miles away from me on an air line.My course was obvious. I must proceed along my ridge to the Citadel,keeping always out of sight; surmount that fortress; descend to thesecond ridge; walk along the other side of it until I was above thosegoats, and then sneak down on them.
I accomplished the first two stages of my journey all right, thoughwith considerably more difficulty in spots than I should haveanticipated. The knife edge was so sharp and the sides so treacherousthat at times it was almost impossible to travel anywhere but right ontop. This would not do. By a little planning, however, I managed toreach the central "keep" of the Citadel: a high, bleak, broken pile,flat on top, with snow in all the crevices, and small cliffs on allsides. From this advantage I could cautiously spy out the lay of theland.
Below me fifty feet dipped the second ridge, running nearly at rightangles. It sloped abruptly to the wolf basin, but fell sheer on theother side to depths I could not at that time guess.[D] A very fewscattered, stunted, and twisted trees huddled close down to the rock andsnow. This saddle was about fifty feet in width and perhaps five hundredyards in length. It ended in another craggy butte very much like theCitadel.
My first glance determined that my original plan would not do. The goatshad climbed from where I had first seen them, and were now leisurelytopping the saddle. To attempt to descend would be to reveal myself. Iwas forced to huddle just where I was. My hope was that the goats wouldwander along the saddle toward me, and not climb the other butteopposite. Also I wanted them to hurry, please, as the snow in which Isat was cold, and the wind piercing.
This apparently they were not inclined to do. They paused, they nibbledat some scanty moss, they gazed at the scenery, they scratched theirears. I shifted my position cautiously--and saw below me,[E] lying onthe snow at the very edge of the cliff, a tremendous billy! He had beenthere all the time; and I had been looking over him!
At the crack of the Springfield he lurched forward and toppled slowlyout of sight over the edge of the cliff. The two I had been stalkinginstantly disappeared. But on the very top of the butte oppositeappeared another. It was a very long shot,[F] but I had to take chances,for I could not tell whether or not the one I had just shot wasaccessible or not. On a guess I held six inches over his back. The goatgave one leap forward into space. For twenty feet he fell spread-eagledand right side up as though flying. Then he began to turn and whirl. Asfar as my personal testimony could go, he is falling yet through thatdizzy blue abyss.
"Good-bye, billy," said I, sadly. It looked then as though I had lostboth.
I worked my way down the face of the Citadel until I was just above thesteep snow fields. Here was a drop of six feet. If the snow was soft,all right. If it was frozen underneath, I would be very likely totoboggan off into space. I pried loose a small rock and dropped it,watching with great interest how it lit. It sunk with a dull plunk.Therefore I made my leap, and found myself waist deep in feathery snow.
With what anxiety I peered over the edge of that precipice the readercan guess. Thirty feet below was a four-foot ledge. On the edge of thatledge grew two stunted pines about three feet in height--and only two.Against those pines my goat had lodged! In my exultation I straightenedup and uttered a whoop. To my surprise it was answered from behind me.Frank had followed my trail. He had killed a nanny and was carrying thehead. Everybody had goats!
After a great deal of man[oe]uvring we worked our way down to the ledgeby means of a crevice and a ten-foot pole. Then we tied the goat to thelittle trees, and set to work. I held Frank while he skinned; and thenhe held me while I skinned. It was very awkward. The tiny landscapealmost directly beneath us was blue with the atmosphere of distance. Asolitary raven discovered us, and began to circle and croak and flop.
"You'll get your meal later," we told him.
Far below us, like suspended leaves swirling in a wind, a dense flock ofsnowbirds fluttered.
We got on well enough until it became necessary to sever the backbone.Then, try as we would, we could not in the general awkwardness reach ajoint with a knife. At last we had a bright idea. I held the head backwhile Frank shot the vertebrae in two with his rifle!
Then we loosed the cords that held the body. It fell six hundred feet,hit a ledge, bounded out, and so di
sappeared toward the hazy blue mapbelow. The raven folded his wings and dropped like a plummet, with astrange rushing sound. We watched him until the increasing speed of hisswoop turned us a little dizzy, and we drew back. When we looked amoment later he had disappeared into the distance--straight down!
Now we had to win our way out. The trophy we tied with a rope. Iclimbed up the pole, and along the crevice as far as the rope would letme, hauled up the trophy, jammed my feet and back against both sides ofthe "chimney." Frank then clambered past me; and so repeat.
But once in the saddle we found we could not return the way we had come.The drop-off into the feather snow settled that. A short reconnaissancemade it very evident that we would have to go completely around theoutside of the Citadel, at the level of the saddle, until we had gainedthe other ridge. This meant about three quarters of a mile against thetremendous cliff.
We found a ledge and started. Our packs weighed about sixty poundsapiece, and we were forced to carry them rather high. The ledge provedto be from six to ten feet wide, with a gentle slope outward. We couldnot afford the false steps, nor the little slips, nor the overbalancingsso unimportant on level ground. Progress was slow and cautious. We couldnot but remember the heart-stopping drop of that goat after we had cutthe rope; and the swoop of the raven. Especially at the corners did wehug close to the wall, for the wind there snatched at us eagerly.
The ledge held out bravely. It had to; for there was no possible way toget up or down from it. We rounded the shoulder of the pile. Below usnow was another landscape into which to fall--the valley of the stream,with its forests and its high cliffs over the way. But already we couldsee our ridge. Another quarter mile would land us in safety.
Without warning the ledge pinched out. A narrow tongue of shale, on sosteep a slope that it barely clung to the mountain, ran twenty feet to aprecipice. A touch sent its surface rattling merrily down and intospace. It was only about eight feet across; and then the ledge beganagain.
We eyed it. Three steps would take us across. Alternative: return alongthe ledge to attack the problem _ab initio_.
"That shale is going to start," said Frank. "If you stop, she'll surecarry you over the ledge. But if you keep right on going, _fast_, Ibelieve your weight will carry you through."
We readjusted our packs so they could not slip and overbalance us; wemeasured and re-measured with our eyes just where those steps wouldfall; we took a deep breath--and we _hustled_. Behind us the fine shaleslid sullenly in a miniature avalanche that cascaded over the edge. Our"weight had carried us through!"
In camp, we found that Harry's shooting had landed a kid, so that we hada goat apiece.
We rejoined the main camp next day just ahead of a big snowstorm thatmust have made travel all but impossible. Then for five days we rodeout, in snow, sleet, and hail. But we were entirely happy, andindifferent to what the weather could do to us now.
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