Just a second or two, before this baby avalanche seemed to have lost both its head and its path, to go aside and play in the deep valley below, there was a hunter, on one side of the ravine, who had climbed up the high rocks, to get a shot at a herd of chamois that were feeding quietly on the other side.
Besides the buck or daddy chamois there were four mothers, each with a pretty little kid, hardly two months old, beside her. Now it was not the season for hunting, and it was against the law, which allowed the mother chamois a quiet interval, and the kids, time to grow up; for a chamois kid needs to be educated just as a child does.
But this fellow, named Erni, was both cruel and lawless. He had brought his spy glass with him and, pulling it out, swept the distant faces of the great cliffs to find his game. Just as this promising family—a buck, with a harem of four does, and as many kids—hove in sight, his fancy was tickled. Law or no law, he would shoot. [[46]]He laid down his glass, pointed the rifle and took cool aim, hoping to bring down two of the chamois at a shot. Then he pulled the trigger. With that gun, it was a case of “a fire at one end and a fool at the other.”
Alas, for human hopes! There is many a slip between muzzle and game. In his case a miss was as good as a mile, or even a league. In the cruel hunter’s brain there had been already a flitting vision of venison pot-pie and chamois steak. He even saw, in his day dream, two fine pairs of mounted horns adorning his parlor walls.
But the daddy of the chamois family had, a second before, thrown up his nose and caught a whiff of some human being near. Looking up in alarm, he saw the huge snow ball in the air above him. Giving the usual sort of whistle, as chamois sentinels do, the whole family started to run, as if racing with the wind, to get under the shelter of an overhanging rock.
Already the bullet had sped, and, despite their speed, one or two chamois might have fallen, but the movement of an avalanche had so thickened and condensed the air, that it was like firing a pellet of lead into molasses, making the ball go slowly. This was what is called “the wind of the avalanche,” which sometimes kills men and beasts.
Instead of the heart of a chamois, the rifle [[47]]bullet struck the monster snowball in the centre, but it hurt the avalanche no more than a flea bite on the end of an elephant’s tail.
We cannot here tell what Erni, the enraged hunter, said.
Having lost the whole day in climbing and now, tired, hungry and vexed with disappointment, he trudged back. When he reached home, his wife kept quiet, his children had to keep away from him, and he did not say his prayers that night.
On the contrary, in the forest home of the chamois, there was much rejoicing, for they had heard the ring of the rifle and seen its flash. In fact, avalanches were very popular in chamois society, for even when one was seen coming, soon enough, the bucks and does could easily dodge them. [[48]]