“Well,” said Joe, “I’ve never been much in the mountains and I’ve never seen a snowslide, but I have heard old people talk about them, and from what they say, they are things to be scared of.”
Presently, the boys set out toward the head of the valley, following the lower border of the talus, where the walking was fairly easy. They hardly expected to see any game, yet both kept their eyes open for anything that might turn up. Presently, immediately in front of them were seen tracks where animals had been running back and forth, and a little examination showed that a small band of mountain sheep had come down from the rocks and had been playing about, no longer ago than this morning.
“If we’d been a little earlier, Joe,” said Jack, “we might have got a shot at those fellows.”
“We may do it yet,” replied Joe, “and if we don’t do it to-day, perhaps we can find them to-morrow. Very likely they live right here somewhere, and I don’t believe they’re a bit scary, so that if we look for them carefully we may be able to get a shot.”
They could see where the sheep had come down to the edge of the valley, perhaps to get a bite of green grass, perhaps to drink, though probably not for water, since the melting snow all over the hillsides would have given them many drinking places.
They kept on slowly up the valley, stopping often to look about and, more than once, sitting down and scanning the rocks about, beyond them, and across the valley for game. By this time the sun had climbed over the mountains and was shining down into the valley with a pleasant warmth and, with the rising sun, rose swarms of mosquitoes, which bothered the boys not a little. As they were walking along, Jack slightly in the lead, a brown and white bird suddenly rose from the ground, almost at his feet, and then fell again, and tumbling over and over, fluttered off for a little way, as if desperately hurt, and then lay on the ground, with outspread, quivering wings, and open beak, as if unable to go further.
“Ah,” said Jack, “there’s a ptarmigan, and there must be a nest right here.”
Sure enough, a few minutes’ search revealed a nest just in front of Jack. It was a mere hollow scratched in the ground and had no lining, except a few blades of grass, and two or three feathers that had dropped from the bird’s breast. In the nest were six beautiful eggs almost covered with purplish spots, mottlings and cloudings, and so nearly the color of many of the stones that lay on the slope that Jack’s eye had passed over them two or three times without seeing that they were eggs and not stones.
“Oh, aren’t they pretty!” said Jack. “Wouldn’t I like to have them safely back East and a picture of the place where we found them, and of the mother bird.”
By this time the mother had risen from the ground where she lay and had walked back, close to the boys, and, with bristling feathers and angry cluckings, stalked so close to them that they could have touched her with their outstretched hands.