His father and his grandfather before him had
looked forth from the same door on the same scene, snuffed the same
"caller air," mentally shaped the same pretext for yielding to the
same spirit of adventure begotten of the peaks and by going forth
to battle with the solitude, and hunted patiently, sometimes with
success, oftener without, the progenitors of the same quarry. So he
prepares himself anew for the wild and perilous tramp. A day--two or
three days--may pass without the compassing of a shot, or even hearing
the whistle of the sentinel goat as he shrills the alarm far out of
range and leads his fellows in twenty minutes to crags the hunter
cannot reach in as many hours. Death crouches in the treacherous
snow-crust beneath or the poised avalanche above. A false step or an
inch's miscalculation of leap may make him a waif for the laemmergeier
or land him among the buried villages of the last century. He toils
on until success or starvation sends him home. In the former case he
out-generals his shy game after a series of manoeuvres to which the
deepest stratagems of our Indians are straightforwardness personified.
He gets a long shot at a distance that would make the musket or
buckshot as useless as a sabre. The certainty may be apparent that the
animal, if hit mortally, must fall some hundreds of feet, perhaps into
an inaccessible chasm. There is no help for that. Now or never! The
short rifle, assisted by a portable rest, is called on for its best.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131