The air was cold, but bracing, just the day for a stalk. Spying the valley carefully, I soon found a goat high up on the cliff to the right. I think it must have been our friend of last evening, who had fed along the side of the hill to his present position up in the valley. The ground did not look impossible, but Kirby pronounced against it as too dangerous.
Higher up on a hill-top at the far end and just on the edge of the snow, I picked up with the glass two more goats and we decided to go for them. It was easy going to the foot of the hill where the valley ended, but a really stiff climb of about one and a half hours to get up to the patch of snow close to which we had seen them, above the line of cover; the hill-side was covered with a sort of heather growing between the rocks and it was very slippery going.
As we arrived at the spot and were looking everywhere for the goats, I saw two goats, a nanny and a kid, moving away about 400 yards off and climbing steadily up the face of the cliff. We both thought they were the two we were after, who had seen us or got our wind.
We were now 6,000 feet up and it was quite cold enough without a blizzard which suddenly set in with a bitter wind, which drove the snow and sleet almost through one.
We were huddled under a sloping rock, trying to get a little shelter, when it struck me to send Kirby up and see if by any chance the goats were still where we had seen them first, as possibly the two we saw moving away were another lot. It was lucky I did so, for he was back in a few minutes with the good news that our goats were feeding quietly in a hollow behind a ridge not a hundred yards above us.
I never was so cold in my life, but leaving Kirby behind, I crawled up to the top of the ridge, and looking over saw to my delight a good billy and two nannies feeding a hundred yards away.
Getting into position for a careful shot, I proceeded to remove the caps of my telescope sight, which I had kept on up to the last moment on account of the rain and the snow.
At the critical moment the front cap jammed, and with my half-frozen hands it took me a couple of minutes, which seemed hours, to get it off. Peering over I saw the goats moving off, they may have got our wind, for heavy gales were eddying round the top of the hill.
The two nannies fortunately went first, the billy was moving on pretty quickly behind. I had just time to get a shot, another moment and he would have disappeared behind some rocks, and I heard the welcome thud of the bullet; he stood for a moment, and as the extraordinary vitality of the mountain goat had been impressed on me by Kirby, I gave him a second shot, and he came rolling down the hill like a rabbit, stone dead.
Had it not been for the jamming of the cap I would certainly have got one of the nannies as well. He was a fine beast, much heavier and bigger than I had expected.