prepared and stored his specimens – but the moment he heard our steps he came briskly out, and, on Dick's introducing me, shook hands with me very heartily.
"And how's poor Tim this morning?" he asked, as soon as the formalities, if they can be called so, were over.
"He is all right, sir," I replied. "I went down there before breakfast this morning at Mr. Warren's request to inquire. In fact, Tim was so much better apparently that Mrs. Donovan declares that if he ever gets the fever again she intends to apply iced water to his feet and wasp-stings to the rest of his anatomy, as being a sure cure. She is immensely grateful to Dick for having discovered and applied a remedy that has worked so well."
"Then if Tim is wise," remarked the professor, laughing, "he won't get the fever again, for I should think the cure would be worse than the disease. But you want to be off, don't you? Do you understand the working of a Winchester repeater? Well," as I shook my head, "then you had better take the Sharp's and Dick the Winchester. And, Dick, you'd better have an eye on the weather. Romero says there is a change coming, and he is generally pretty reliable. So, now, off you go; and good luck to you."
Leaving the cabin, we went straight on up the narrow valley for about three miles – the pine-clad mountains rising half a mile high on either side of us – going as quickly as we could, or, to be more exact, going as quickly as I could. For the elevation, beginning at nine thousand feet, increased, of course, at every step, and I, being unused to such altitudes, found myself much distressed for breath – a fact which was rather a surprise to me, considering that in our track-meets at school the mile run was my strong point. I did not understand then that to get enough oxygen out of that thin mountain air it was necessary to take two breaths where one would suffice at sea-level.
We had ascended about a thousand feet, I think, when, at the base of the bare ridge for which we had been making, we slackened our pace, and my companion, who knew the country, taking the lead, we went scrambling up over the rocks and snow for an hour or more.
The quantity of snow we found up there was a surprise to me, for, from below the amount seemed trifling. There had been a heavy fall up in the range a month before, and this snow, drifting into the gullies, had settled into compact masses, the surface of which, on this, the southern face of the mountain, being every day slightly softened by the heat of the sun, and every night frozen solid again, made the footing exceedingly treacherous. Whenever, therefore, we found it necessary to cross one of these steep-tilted snow-beds we did so with the greatest caution.
We had been climbing, as I have said, for more than an hour, and were nearing the top of the ridge, when Dick stopped and silently beckoned to me to come up to where he lay, crouching under shelter of a little ledge.
"Smell anything?" he whispered.
I gave a sniff and raised my eyebrows inquiringly.
"Sheep?" said I, softly.
My companion nodded.
"They must be somewhere close by," said he, in a voice hardly audible. "Go very carefully and keep your eyes wide open. If you see anything, stop instantly."
We were lying side by side upon the rocks, Dick considerately waiting a moment while I got my breath again, and were just about to crawl forward, when there came the sound of a sudden rush of hoofs and a clatter of stones from some invisible point ahead of us, and then dead silence again.
"They've winded us and gone off," whispered Dick. But the next moment he added eagerly, "There they are! Look! There they are! Up there! See? My! What a chance!"
Immediately on our left was a deep gorge, so narrow and precipitous that we could not see the bottom of it from where we lay. The sheep, having seemingly got wind of us, with that agility which is always so astonishing in such heavy animals, had rushed down one side of the precipitous gorge and up the other, and now, there they were, all standing in a row – eleven of them – on the opposite summit, looking down, not at us, but at something immediately below them.
"What do you suppose it is, Dick?" I whispered.
"Don't know," my companion replied. "Mountain-lion, perhaps: they are very partial to mutton. Anyhow," he continued, "if we want to get a shot we must shoot from here: we can't move without the sheep seeing us, and they'd be off like a flash if they did. You take a shot, Frank. Take the nearest one. Sight for two hundred yards."
"No," I replied. "You shoot. I shall miss: I'm too unsteady for want of breath."
"All right."
Raising himself a fraction of an inch at a time until he had come to a kneeling position, Dick pushed his rifle-barrel through a crevice in the rocks, took aim and fired. The nearest sheep, a fine fellow with a handsome pair of horns, pitched forward, fell headlong from the ledge upon which he had been standing and vanished from our sight among the broken rocks below; while the others turned tail and fled up the mountain, disappearing also in a minute or less.
"Come on!" cried Dick, springing to his feet. "Let's go across and get him. Round this way. Don't trust to that slope of ice: you may slip and break your neck."
"But the mountain-lion, Dick," I protested. "Suppose there's a mountain-lion down there."
"Oh, never mind him!" Dick exclaimed. "If there was one, he's gone by this time. And even if he should be there yet, he'd skip the moment he saw us. We needn't mind him. Come on!"
Away we went, therefore, Dick in the lead, and scrambling quickly though carefully down the rocky wall, we made our way up the bed of the ravine until we found ourselves opposite the ledge upon which the sheep had been standing. Here we discovered that the wall of the gorge was split from top to bottom by a narrow cleft – previously invisible to us – filled with hard snow, and whether the sheep had been standing on the right side or the left of this crevice, and therefore on which side the big ram had fallen, we could not tell; for the wall of the gorge, besides being exceedingly rough, was littered with great masses of rock against any of which the body of the sheep might have lodged.
"I'll tell you what, Frank," said my companion. "It might take us an hour or two to search all the cracks and crannies here. The best plan will be to climb straight up to the ledge where the sheep stood and look down. Then, if he is lodged against the upper side of any of these rocks, we shall be able to see him. But as we can't tell whether he was standing on the right or the left of this crevice, suppose you climb up one side while I go up the other."
"All right," said I. "You take the one on the left and I'll go up on this side."
It was a laborious climb for both of us – and how those sheep got up there so quickly is a wonder to me still – but as my side of the crevice happened to be easier of ascent than Dick's I got so far ahead of him that I presently found myself about fifty yards in the lead.
At this point, however, I met with an obstruction which at first seemed likely to stop me altogether. The fallen rocks were so big, and piled so high, that I could not get over them, and for a moment I thought I should be forced to go back and try another passage. Before resorting to this measure, though, I thought I would attempt to get round the barrier by taking to the snow-bank, supporting myself by holding on to the rocks. To do this I should need the use of both my hands, so, as my rifle had no strap by which to hang it over my shoulder, I took out my handkerchief, tied one end to the trigger-guard, took the other end in my teeth, and slinging the weapon behind me, I seized the rock with both hands and set one foot on the snow.
It was at this moment that Dick, down below me on the other side of the crevice, while in the act of crawling up over a big rock, caught a glimpse of something moving over on my side, and the next instant, out from between two great fragments of granite
