“Come on, now,” he continued, as he turned and started up the ridge, “let’s get up here to a sheltered place and then we can sit down and eat a bite. I put some bread and bacon in my pocket this morning when we started, and we may as well eat and smoke a pipe before we go on.”
CHAPTER XVII
A FAT BIGHORN
IN a sheltered spot at the foot of a great morainal ridge the three climbers sat down and ate their lunch. The air was warm and the sun bright, but every now and then a drift of breeze came down to them which felt cool, for they had been working hard and their garments were damp with perspiration. Hugh smoked his pipe, and then presently they rose and started to clamber further up the glacier. Presently they came upon the tracks of some large animals, either sheep or goats, which had passed over the moraine not long before. The surface of the ground was so hard that they could not be sure what these animals were, but looking over the snow-covered ice before them, they could see the tracks passing up over it, and at last turning up toward the peaks behind a rocky point which ran out from the mountainside. Hugh followed the tracks as far as the snow, and when they reached its unbroken surface they could see that the tracks were fresh, and before long Hugh turned to Jack and said, “They’re sheep. A couple of good rams, I guess.”
After they had come quite near the rocky point behind which the tracks led, Joe, who was a little to one side, suddenly stopped, and called out: “Look at that ram.” From where they stood, neither Hugh nor Jack could see any living thing, but Jack stepped over toward Joe, and as he did so there came into his view a splendid bighorn, outlined against the snow so that every detail of his form could be seen.
The animal’s head was up, and he gazed in curiosity rather than alarm at the three strange creatures that he saw below him.
Jack had loaded his rifle at Joe’s exclamation and now asked, “How far off is he, Hugh?”
“About two hundred yards, I reckon,” said Hugh. “Draw a coarse sight and shoot at his neck.”
The animal was standing half quartering toward them in such a position that his head and neck were in line with his shoulders, and a ball through the shoulder would pierce either heart or lungs. Jack did not raise his sights, but following Hugh’s suggestion fired at the animal’s neck, just below the throat, so as to allow for any drop of the ball. For an instant the smoke hung, and when Jack could see through it, the animal had disappeared.
“Did anyone see where the ball struck?” asked Jack.
“Not I,” said Hugh.