"You won't find any game in here. A rabbit couldn't get enough to live on among such rocks as these."
"Come right along! I want to get a look at the ledges up there. There's no telling what we may stumble upon."
Steve's young eyes were fully occupied, as they pushed forward, with the strange beauty and grandeur of the scenery above, beyond, and behind him. The air was clear and almost cool, and there was plenty of light in the shadiest nooks of the chasm.
"What torrents of water must pour down through here at some seasons of the year," he was saying to himself, when his companion suddenly stopped, with a sharp, "Hist! Look there!" and raised his rifle.
Steve looked.
Away up on the edge of the beetling white crag at their right, the first "game" they had seen that day was calmly gazing down upon them.
A "big-horn antelope" has the best nerves in the world, and it is nothing to him how high may be the precipice on the edge of which he is standing. His head never gets dizzy, and his feet never slip, for he was made to live in that kind of country, and feels entirely at home in spots where no other living thing cares to follow him.
That was a splendid specimen of what the first settlers called the "Rocky Mountain sheep," until they found that it was not a sheep at all, but an "antelope." His strong, wide, curling horns were of the largest size, and gave him an expression of dignity and wisdom as he peered down upon the hunters who had intruded upon his solitudes. He would have shown more wisdom by not looking at all, for in a moment more the sharp crack of Murray's rifle awoke the echoes of the cañon, and then, with a great bound, the big-horn came tumbling down among the rocks, almost at Steve Harrison's feet.
"He's a little battered by his fall," said Murray, "that's a fact. But he'll be just as good eating. Let's hoist him on that bowlder and go ahead."
"He's as much as we'd like to carry in."