ost
both.

I worked my way down the face of the Citadel until I was just above the
steep snow fields. Here was a drop of six feet. If the snow was soft,
all right. If it was frozen underneath, I would be very likely to
toboggan off into space. I pried loose a small rock and dropped it,
watching with great interest how it lit. It sunk with a dull plunk.
Therefore I made my leap, and found myself waist deep in feathery snow.

With what anxiety I peered over the edge of that precipice the reader
can guess. Thirty feet below was a four-foot ledge. On the edge of that
ledge grew two stunted pines about three feet in height--and only two.
Against those pines my goat had lodged! In my exultation I straightened
up and uttered a whoop. To my surprise it was answered from behind me.
Frank had followed my trail. He had killed a nanny and was carrying the
head. Everybody had goats!

After a great deal of man[oe]uvring we worked our way down to the ledge
by means of a crevice and a ten-foot pole. Then we tied the goat to the
little trees, and set to work. I held Frank while he skinned; and then
he held me while I skinned. It was very awkward. The tiny landscape
almost directly beneath us was blue with the atmosphere of distance. A
solitary raven discovered us, and began to circle and croak and flop.

"You'll get your meal later," we told him.

Far below us, like suspended leaves swirling in a wind, a dense flock of
snowbirds fluttered.

We got on well enough until it became necessary to sever the backbone.
Then, try as we would, we could not in the general awkwardness reach a
joint with a knife. At last we had a bright idea. I held the head back
while Frank shot the vertebrae in two with his rifle!

Then we loosed the cords that held the body. It fell six hundred feet,
hit a ledge, bounded out, and so disappeared toward the hazy blue map
below. The raven folded his wings and dropped like a plummet, with a
strange rushing sound. We watched him until the increasing speed of his
swoop turned us a little dizzy, and we drew back. When we looked a
moment later he had disappeared into the distance--straight down!

Now we had to win our way out. The trophy we tied with a rope. I
climbed up the pole, and along the crevice as far as the rope would let
me, hauled up the trophy, jammed my feet and back against both sides of
the "chimney." Frank then clambered past me; and so repeat.

But once in the saddle we found we could not return