sun was out, but as
soon as it disappeared we needed a fire and the nights were freezing cold;
yet the natives did not seem to mind it in the slightest and refused our
offer of a canvas tent fly.

We never will forget that first night on the Snow Mountain. As we sat at
dinner about the campfire we could see the somber mass of the forest losing
itself in the darkness, and felt the unseen presence of the mighty peaks
standing guard about our mountain home. We slept, breathing the strong,
sweet perfume of the spruce trees and dreamed that we two were wandering
alone through the forest opening the treasure boxes of the Wild.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FIRST GORAL

We were awakened before daylight by Wu's long drawn call to the hunters,
"_L-a-o-u H-o, L-a-o-u H-o, L-a-o-u H-o_." The steady drum of rain on our
tent shot a thrill of disappointment through me as I opened my eyes, but
before we had crawled out of our sleeping-bags and dressed it lessened to a
gentle patter and soon ceased altogether. It left a cold, gray morning with
dense clouds weaving in and out among the peaks but, nevertheless, I
decided to go out with the hunters to try for goral.

Two of the men took the dogs around the base of a high rock shoulder
sparsely covered with scrub spruce while I went up the opposite slope
accompanied by the other two. We had not been away from camp half an hour
when the dogs began to yelp and almost immediately we heard them coming
around the summit of the ridge in our direction. The hunters made frantic
signs for me to hurry up the steep slope but in the thin air with my heart
pounding like a trip hammer I could not go faster than a walk.

We climbed about three hundred yards when suddenly the dogs appeared on the
side of the cliff near the summit. Just in front of them was a bounding
gray form. The mist closed in and we lost both dogs and animals but ten
minutes later a blessed gust of wind drifted the fog away and the goral was
indistinctly visible with its back to a rock ledge facing the dogs. The big
red leader of the pack now and then dashed in for a nip at the animal's
throat but was kept at bay by its vicious lunges and sharp horns.

It was nearly three hundred yards away but the cloud was drifting in again
and I dropped down for a shot. The hunters were running up the slope,
frantically waving for me to come on, thinking it madness to shoot at that
distance. I could just see the gray form through the sights and t