or a last look, would disappear.

Those were the days when if a man had a deer, a sheep, an antelope, or
the bosse ribs of a buffalo cow on his pack or in his wagon, it did not
occur to him to shoot at the game among which he rode. I have seen sheep
feeding on the prairies with antelope, and in little groups by
themselves in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, and men whose
experience extends much further back than mine--men, too, whose life was
largely devoted to observing the wild animals among which they
lived--unite in telling me that they were commonly found in such
situations. Personally I never saw sheep among buffalo, but knowing as I
do the situations that both inhabited and the ways of life of each, I am
confident that sheep were often found with the buffalo, just as were
antelope.

The country of northwestern Montana, where high prairie is broken now
and then by steep buttes rising to a height of several hundred feet, and
by little ranges of volcanic uplifts like the Sweet Grass Hills, the
Bear Paw Mountains, the Little Rockies, the Judith, and many others, was
a favorite locality for sheep, and so, no doubt, was the butte country
of western North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, this being roughly
the eastern limit of the species. In general it may be said that the
plains sheep preferred plateaus much like those inhabited by the mule
deer, a prairie country where there were rough broken hills or buttes,
to which they could retreat when disturbed. That this habit was taken
advantage of to destroy them will be shown further on.

To-day, if one can climb above timber line in summer to the beautiful
green alpine meadows just below the frowning snow-clad peaks in regions
where sheep may still be found, his eye may yet be gladdened by the
sight of a little group resting on the soft grass far from any cover
that might shelter an enemy. If disturbed, the sheep get up
deliberately, take a long careful look, and walking slowly toward the
rocks, clamber out of harm's way. It will be labor wasted to follow
them.

Such sights may be witnessed still in portions of Montana and British
Columbia, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, where bald, rolling mountains,
showing little or no rock, are frequented by the sheep, which graze over
the uplands, descending at midday to the valleys to drink, and then
slowly working their way up the hills again to their illimitable
pastures.

Of Dall's sheep, the white Alaskan form, we are t