“All right,” said Jack, and creeping forward to where a larger piece of rock crowned the knoll, he rose to his knees behind it, and, resting his rifle against the side of it, prepared to shoot. The sheep was still feeding and had his tail toward Jack, but was considerably below the boy’s position, so Jack aimed at the animal’s back, just in front of the hips, and drawing a fine sight, fired. The ram fell, and the boys scrambled down to it, and found it lying dead. The shot had entered the back just to the right of the backbone and had passed forward and downward through the lungs and heart.
“Good shot,” said Joe. “It’s pretty hard to shoot down hill that way; ‘most always shoot over.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “that’s so; but you see I had two or three chances, because his hips were toward me and that gave me a long surface to fire at. I made up my mind that I’d shoot at the kidneys, and if I didn’t hit them I had the chance of cutting his lungs and heart and also of breaking his back.”
“Yes,” said Joe, “that’s so. He gave you good shot.”
“Well,” said Jack, “we’ve got to get this beast back to camp, or at least as much of him as we can carry, and I suppose we may as well get at it.”
When their knives were out it did not take long to skin the sheep. The head was not worth taking along.
When, however, it came to carrying the animal they found it was much too heavy to be transported in one trip. As a matter of fact, neither of the boys was stout enough to take half the sheep on his back. They were obliged to quarter it.
“Tell you what,” said Joe, “we don’t know much.”
“Well,” replied Jack, “I guess that’s so; but what do you mean?”
“Why,” said Joe, “next time we come out hunting each one of us better take a sack and two or three strings in his pocket, and then if we kill anything we can cut the meat off the bones and put it in the sack, and that saves all the trouble of carrying the bones into camp.”