"They must be somewhere close by," said he, in a voice hardly audible. "Go very carefully and keep your eyes wide open. If you see anything, stop instantly."
We were lying side by side upon the rocks, Dick considerately waiting a moment while I got my breath again, and were just about to crawl forward, when there came the sound of a sudden rush of hoofs and a clatter of stones from some invisible point ahead of us, and then dead silence again.
"They've winded us and gone off," whispered Dick. But the next moment he added eagerly, "There they are! Look! There they are! Up there! See? My! What a chance!"
Immediately on our left was a deep gorge, so narrow and precipitous that we could not see the bottom of it from where we lay. The sheep, having seemingly got wind of us, with that agility which is always so astonishing in such heavy animals, had rushed down one side of the precipitous gorge and up the other, and now, there they were, all standing in a row—eleven of them—on the opposite summit, looking down, not at us, but at something immediately below them.
"What do you suppose it is, Dick?" I whispered.
"Don't know," my companion replied. "Mountain-lion, perhaps: they are very partial to mutton. Anyhow," he continued, "if we want to get a shot we must shoot from here: we can't move without the sheep seeing us, and they'd be off like a flash if they did. You take a shot, Frank. Take the nearest one. Sight for two hundred yards."
"No," I replied. "You shoot. I shall miss: I'm too unsteady for want of breath."
"All right."
Raising himself a fraction of an inch at a time until he had come to a kneeling position, Dick pushed his rifle-barrel through a crevice in the rocks, took aim and fired. The nearest sheep, a fine fellow with a handsome pair of horns, pitched forward, fell headlong from the ledge upon which he had been standing and vanished from our sight among the broken rocks below; while the others turned tail and fled up the mountain, disappearing also in a minute or less.
"Come on!" cried Dick, springing to his feet. "Let's go across and get him. Round this way. Don't trust to that slope of ice: you may slip and break your neck."