ent up toward it, and I saw
the sheep moving about. It went out to a little flat place on the slide
rock, where the slide rock had pushed out a little further, making a
little low butte, or flat-topped table; it was loose rock, with
snow. Here the sheep lay down.
"I went around to station my man where he could get a rest for his
rifle, and when I had done this, I went around above to make the sheep
get up to drive him out, so that the man could shoot him. After I got
well up the gulch, above him, the sheep could see me plainly, and I
could see his eyes. I hesitated about making him get up, thinking
perhaps it was somebody's tame sheep, but we were the first ones up
there that spring, and of course it was not a tame sheep. If we had not
been out of meat I would not have disturbed the animal. I walked toward
it to make it get up, but it would not, and still lay there. When I was
within thirty feet of it I took up a stone and threw it, and called at
him. The sheep stood up and looked at me. I said, 'Go on, now,' and he
started in the direction I wished him to take. When he came in sight,
the man fired two or three shots at him, but did not hurt him, and the
sheep again lay down in sight of camp. Afterward I fired at him about
300 yards up the side of the mountain, but I did not touch him. However,
he was disturbed by the shooting, and moved away.
"It is often difficult to find a reason for the way sheep act. It is
possible that this young ram, which was in the Sunlight Mining District,
had seen many miners, and that they had not disturbed him, and that so
he had lost his fear of man. He was not at all afraid of horses, perhaps
because he was accustomed to seeing miners' horses; or he may have taken
them for elk. I do not see why our wind did not alarm him. At all
events, for some reason, this one showed no fear.
"Along the Gardiner River, inside the northern boundary of the
Yellowstone Park, there are always a number of sheep in winter, and they
become very tame, having learned by experience that people passing to
and fro will not injure them. Men driving up the road from Mammoth Hot
Springs to Gardiner, constantly see these sheep, which manifest the
utmost indifference to those who are passing them. Sometimes they stand
close enough to the road for a driver to reach them with his whip. One
winter the surgeon at the post, driving along, came upon a sheep
standing in the road, and as it did not move, he had to stop his
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