sional report of a gun, more and more
distant, reverberating among the rocks.

I turned to descend, and as I did so I could see the valley below alive
with Indians passing rapidly through it, on horseback and on foot.
A little farther on, all were stopping as they came up; the camp was
preparing, and the lodges rising. I descended to this spot, and soon
after Reynal and Raymond returned. They bore between them a sheep which
they had pelted to death with stones from the edge of a ravine, along
the bottom of which it was attempting to escape. One by one the hunters
came dropping in; yet such is the activity of the Rocky Mountain sheep
that, although sixty or seventy men were out in pursuit, not more than
half a dozen animals were killed. Of these only one was a full-grown
male. He had a pair of horns twisted like a ram's, the dimensions of
which were almost beyond belief. I have seen among the Indians ladles
with long handles, capable of containing more than a quart, cut from
such horns.

There is something peculiarly interesting in the character and habits
of the mountain sheep, whose chosen retreats are above the region of
vegetation and storms, and who leap among the giddy precipices of their
aerial home as actively as the antelope skims over the prairies below.

Through the whole of the next morning we were moving forward, among
the hills. On the following day the heights gathered around us, and the
passage of the mountains began in earnest. Before the village left its
camping ground, I set forward in company with the Eagle-Feather, a man
of powerful frame, but of bad and sinister face. His son, a light-limbed
boy, rode with us, and another Indian, named the Panther, was also of
the party. Leaving the village out of sight behind us, we rode together
up a rocky defile. After a while, however, the Eagle-Feather discovered
in the distance some appearance of game, and set off with his son in
pursuit of it, while I went forward with the Panther. This was a mere
NOM DE GUERRE; for, like many Indians, he concealed his real name out
of some superstitious notion. He was a very noble looking fellow. As he
suffered his ornamented buffalo robe to fall into folds about his loins,
his stately and graceful figure was fully displayed; and while he sat
his horse in an easy attitude, the long feathers of the prairie cock
fluttering from the crown of his head, he seemed the very model of
a wild prairie-rider. He had not the same featu