"Ah," said Jack, with a long sigh of contentment, "I thought I heard the bullet strike, but I wasn't dead sure."
"Well, I guess he's stopped over there somewhere: we surely would have seen him if he'd run off anywhere. What's that?" As Hugh spoke, Jack heard a clatter of stones, which to his ears sounded as if the whole face of the bluff were sliding down, and a moment later a cloud of dust, rising over the shoulder of the little ridge behind which the sheep had disappeared, showed that some commotion was taking place over there. A moment more and the great sheep appeared, slowly rolling over and over down the hill, his legs sticking up in the air at one moment, then his back and great horns showing, as he rolled on toward the valley.
"Ha!" said Hugh, "he's saving us quite a lot of packing. Now, the first thing we'll do is to go over there and butcher him, and bring the meat into camp; and then we'll eat breakfast."
They crossed the stream, which was only two or three inches deep, on a wide riffle, and were soon standing over the game. It was a magnificent animal; far handsomer, Jack thought, than any game he had as yet killed—a picture of strength, grace and beauty.
"Well," said Jack, "I did hope that maybe sometime during the year I'd get a chance to shoot a sheep, but I never expected to have it come so soon."
"And I expect you never thought a sheep would walk right into camp to be killed, either."
"No, I surely didn't think that."
"Now, I expect," said Hugh, "that you'd like to save this skin, and the head, too; it's a good head, and you may kill a whole lot of sheep before you'll ever see a better, and yet I don't like the idea of packing this head all over the country; I wonder if we couldn't cache it somewhere, and then try to come back here and get it when we're going south this fall."
"That would be good, but how would you ever find it again? Of course you couldn't be sure of coming right back to this place. You might have to travel up or down the Yellowstone a long way, hunting for the head."
"Don't you fret yourself about that, son; I know where this creek is just as well as you know where the corrals are, down at the ranch. Many a time I've camped here, and if we hang this head up in a tree somewhere near here, I can find it the darkest night that ever was; but what I'm thinking about is, that maybe we won't come back this way, and I don't want to travel a hundred miles just to get a sheep's head. Anyhow, I'll cut the skin of the neck low down, and we can make up our minds later what we'll do with the skull."