A second more, and her broadhead arrow would have flown. But of a sudden the wild creature’s forelegs crumpled beneath him and he fell with a great rattling of horns, to go rolling over and over down a twenty-foot embankment.
Fleet as the wind, the girl leaped clear of her retreat and away down that slope. “He may merely have stumbled, may be up and away.” Little she knew of wild goats, whose feet are surer than any other thing in life. The goat was dead. Johnny’s first arrow had pierced him through and through.
One look at the fallen creature was enough. His eyes were glazed in death.
Climbing to the top of a boulder, she cupped her hands to give forth a long, shrill call.
“Who-hoo!”
Three times this was repeated. Then came the answer echoing back.
“He has heard. He will come.” She smiled.
That evening they ate goat’s meat prepared by cutting it into narrow strips and allowing it to freeze. That night they slept huddled together for warmth beneath a rude snow hut which Johnny, under the old man’s directions, was able to build against a wall of rock.
“One thing is sure,” Johnny said as he prepared for rest. “There is no need for maintaining a watch to-night.”
He was destined to have another thought regarding this next morning. Beside the pile of goat’s meat they had left carelessly on a rock, he saw a single footprint. The goatskin and a portion of the meat was gone.