The two daring hunters disappeared, and Ike, whose desire for meat was greater than his love for the chase, began circling about the confused pile of rocks so as to keep his companions in sight.
The bighorn "sheep" is in reality not a sheep at all, but a variety of powerful mountain antelope, whose strength, speed and daring among the rocks and cañons are not the least wonderful things about the wonderful land in which he makes his exclusive home.
Even old Western hunters believe that these animals can leap from immense heights and land on their horns without harm, but this is an error.
While Ike was gazing with eager eyes and open mouth at the towering, volcanic cliffs, the bighorn came to view on a rock five hundred feet overhead.
The hunters were close behind, and the creature's only means of escape was to leap across a chasm fully thirty feet wide to another rock of a little lower elevation.
"Shoot! shoot!" yelled the excited Ike, as the bighorn gathered himself up and eyed the terrific gorge that beset his course.
As if stung to desperation by the shout the creature leaped forward with a force that must have cleared the gulf, and an accuracy that would have insured a landing on the other side, but just as it sprang into mid-air two shots rang out within a small fraction of a second of each other, and the bighorn came crashing down and fell dead at the black boy's feet.
In his wild excitement Ike discharged the rusty single-barrel shot-gun, which he had been hugging in his arms as if it were a baby. All the power of the old-fashioned weapon must have been in the report and recoil, for the former sounded like the explosion of a howitzer, and the latter was so terrific as to send the holder sprawling across the carcass of the bighorn.
Sam Willett saw all this as he hurried down the rocks, otherwise he might have thought when he had reached the bottom that the animal had fallen on his companion and faithful servant and killed him.
"Hello, Ike, old fellow, what's up?" asked Sam, as he helped the owner of the shot-gun to his feet.