said:
"Manley, if I could shoot as you do I would never want any better
business." And the other fellows said they guessed we were having better
luck with one gun than with six, so we had a merry time after all. These
animals were of a bluish color, with hair much finer than deer, and
resembled a goat more than a sheep. These three were all females and
their horns were quite straight, not curved like the big males. We cut
the meat from the bones and broke them up, making a fine soup which
tasted pretty good. They were in pretty good order, and the meat like
very good mutton.

We kept pushing on down the river. The rapids were still dangerous in
many places, but not so frequent nor so bad as the part we had gone
over, and we could see that the river gradually grew smoother as we
progressed.

After a day or two we began to get out of the canons, but the mountains
and hills on each side were barren and of a pale yellow caste, with no
chance for us to climb up and take a look to see if there were any
chances for us further along. We had now been obliged to follow the
canon for many miles, for the only way to get out was to get out
endwise, climbing the banks being utterly out of the question. But these
mountains soon came to an end, and there was some cottonwood and willows
on the bank of the river, which was now so smooth we could ride along
without the continual loading and unloading we had been forced to
practice for so long. We had begun to get a little desperate at the lack
of game, but the new valley, which grew wider all the time, gave us hope
again, if it was quite barren everywhere except back of the willow
trees.

We were floating along very silently one day, for none of us felt very
much in the mood for talking, when we heard a distant sound which we
thought was very much like the firing of a gun. We kept still, and in a
short time a similar sound was heard, plainer and evidently some ways
down the stream. Again and again we heard it, and decided that it must
be a gun shot, and yet we were puzzled to know how it could be. We were
pretty sure there were no white people ahead of us, and we did not
suppose the Indians in this far-off land had any firearms. It might be
barely possible that we were coming now to some wagon train taking a
southern course, for we had never heard that there were any settlements
in this direction and the barren country would preclude any such thing,
as we viewed it now. If it was a h