shelving rock below. One after
another, in quick succession, they shot down, struck the shelf and
leaped sidewise to a ledge a dozen feet beneath. In spite of their
efforts to retard their speed, they had gained tremendous momentum
before reaching the ledge and landed with all four feet bunched beneath
them. It seemed that their legs would surely be thrust through their
bodies. Their heads jerked downward, their noses threatened to be
skinned on the rock! Yet that rough descent neither disabled nor
unnerved them. They recovered their balance instantly and trotted away
around a turn of the wall.

One young ram thought to escape by leaving the cliff and making his way
across a steep, snowy slide to another crag. In places he struck soft
snow and plunged heavily, breaking his way through. Midway between
crags, however, he came to grief quite unexpectedly. An oozing spring
had overflowed and covered the rocks with a coating of ice. Then snow
had blown down from above and covered it. The ram struck this at top
speed, and a moment afterward was turning somersaults down the slope.
A hundred feet below he nimbly recovered his balance and proceeded on
his way, carrying his head haughtily, as though indignant at my burst
of laughter.

Part way down the cliff I found the tracks of the big ram leader of the
band. I had long since named him "Big Eye," which an old trapper had
told me was the Indians' expression for extraordinary eyesight. Not
that "Big Eye" was exceptional in this respect, not at all! Every one
of his band possessed miraculous eyesight. But he was always alert and
wary. It was unbelievable that he could detect me such a long way off,
around bowlders, through granite walls, in thick brush, but it seemed
to me he did. No matter how carefully I concealed my approach, he
always discovered me. This day he had left his band and had turned
aside upon an extremely narrow shelf and made his way out of sight. I
followed his tracks, curious to learn where he had gone. Many places
he had negotiated without slacking his speed, whereas I was forced to
make detours for better footing, to double back and forth, and
generally to progress very slowly. Apparently he was not much
frightened, for his tracks showed that he had frequently halted to look
behind him.

So intent was I upon overtaking him, that I ran into a flock of
ptarmigan and nearly stepped on one of the "fool hens" before it took
wing and got ou