Sheep they are, wild ones, different from the domesticated animal as greyhound from dachshund. No short legs nor low bodies theirs; no bushy tails, nor tangle of wool to encumber them. Instead, coats clean and smooth, with limbs long, sinewy, and supple as those of stag itself. Several pairs of horns are visible in the flock, one pair spirally curving much larger than any of the others; indeed, of such dimensions, and seeming weight, as to make it a wonder how the old ram, their owner, can hold up his head. Yet is it he who is holding head highest; the same who had snorted, hammering the ground with his hoof.
He has done so, repeatedly, since; the last time to be the last in his life. Through the leafy branches, cautiously parted, shoots out a double jet of flame and smoke; three cracks are heard; then again there is dead game on the ground.
This time, however, counting less in heads; only one—that carrying the grand curvature of horns. Alone the leader of the flock has fallen to the second fusillade, killed by the rifle’s bullet. For the shot from the double-barrel, though hitting too, has glanced off the thick felt-like coats of the carneros as from a corslet of steel.
“Carrai!” exclaims the gambusino, with a vexed air, as they step up to the fallen quarry. “This time we haven’t done so well—in fact, worse than nothing.”
“But why?” queries the young Englishman, in wonder at the other’s strange words and ways, after having made such a big kill.
“Why, you ask, señorito! Don’t your nostrils tell you? Mil diablos! how the brute stinks!”
Truth he speaks, as his hunting companion, now standing over the dead body of the bighorn, can well perceive—sensible of an offensive odour arising from it as that of ram in the rutting season.
“What a fool I’ve been to spend bullet upon him!” continues the Mexican, without awaiting rejoinder. “Nor was it his great bulk or horns that tempted me. No; all through thinking of that other thing, which made me careless which of them I aimed at.”
“What other thing?”
“The smoke. Well, it’s no use crying over spilt milk nor any to bother more about the brute. It’s only fit food for coyotes; and the sooner they get it into their bellies the better. Faugh! Let us away from it.”