“He’s coming,” cried the Englishman.
Before Phil, his eyes on the camera “finder,” could retreat there was a snort and the ram threw himself from the shelf. He fell short on his charge but, with another cry, sprang to his feet again. This time “Old Baldy” expanded himself once more into the majestic creature he had once been and again charged the boy. But once more he fell short, as Phil sprang backwards.
Balked of his prey the ram fell on his knees and then on his belly. His head was yet erect; on each side of the cross marking his face his big dull eyes glared wickedly. Then the flash in them suddenly faded to a dull gray like his thin, straggly coat, and the defiant head sank slowly down.
“It’s his last fight,” exclaimed Frank.
Once more Phil advanced and “snapped” the prostrate “monarch of the mountains.” Then the three approached to within a few feet of the feeble animal. The old leader of the mountain sheep suddenly threw his head up; the gray of his eyes turned to fire and, quivering in every muscle, he rose in the air like a ball. In the same motion the ram threw himself forward again, but the effort was his last. Half-way in the spring the beast dropped to the rocks in collapse and, his eyes closed, sank again and rolled on his side.
“Pelton,” said Frank, omitting in his excitement the young Englishman’s title, “we’ve always planned, if we found ‘Old Baldy’ alive, that he was to be yours. His day is over. End his suffering.”
“I don’t like to do it,” said Lord Pelton. “It don’t seem sportsmanlike.”
“You can see he’s dying,” argued Phil. “Isn’t it better that his head and horns be carried away as a trophy than that the old sheep be left here to be torn to pieces by eagles?”
Slowly Lord Pelton raised his rifle and, with a bullet in the center of “Old Baldy’s” cross, Husha the Black Earn gave one convulsion and the king was dead.
Before taking time to measure the dead ram, Frank and Phil hurriedly turned for a further examination of old Husha’s home, for such apparently the natural rock refuge had been for years. The shelf around the pool was worn smooth by the bodies of its inhabitants. Rock edges were covered with sheep hair and the scattered bones strewn about indicated that many animals had died in the enclosure. More especially interested in the old leader’s throne-like shelf the three hunters hurried in that direction.