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By mistake Hotenfa had discharged a load of buckshot and it was my bullet which had killed the goral but his joy was so great that I would not for anything have disillusioned him. It was a half hour's hard work to get to the place where the goral had fallen. The dogs were already there lying quietly beside the animal when we arrived.
I photographed the goral where it lay and after it had been eviscerated, and the hunters had performed their ceremonies to the God of the Hunt, I sent one of them back with it while Hotenfa and I worked toward the bottom of the cañon in the hope of finding the other animals.
There directly under us stood a huge goral, but just as I was about to shoot, the earth gave way beneath my feet and I would have fallen squarely on the animal had Hotenfa not seized me by the collar and drawn me back to safety. The goral had not discovered where the shower of dirt and stones came from before I fired hurriedly, breaking his fore leg at the knee.
Hardly had we drawn back when a yell from the other hunter brought us again to the edge of the cliff just in time to see a second goral dash into the forest a good three hundred yards away in the very bottom of the gorge. Rather disappointed we continued along the ridge and Hotenfa made signs which said as plainly as words, "I told you so. The gorals are not on the peaks but down in the forest.
Hotenfa carried him in his arms and laid him gently on a blanket in the temple but the splendid animal died during the night. His master cried like a child and I am sure that he felt more real sorrow than he would have shown at the loss of his wife; for wives are much easier to get in China than good hunting dogs.
I fired as she ran, striking her squarely in the heart, and she pitched headlong into the bushes a hundred feet below. How Hotenfa managed to pack that animal to the summit of the ridge I never can understand, for with a light sack upon my back and a rifle it was all I could do to pull myself up the rocks.
When we arrived, Hotenfa motioned me to swing about to the right while he climbed along the face of the rock wall. No sooner had he reached the edge of the precipice than I saw him lean far out, fire with my three-barrel gun, and frantically wave for me to come. I ran to him and, throwing my arms about a projecting shrub, looked down.
It was too good a place to leave and I sent Hotenfa to inquire from a family of natives if there was big game of any sort in the vicinity. He reported that there were goral not far away, and at half past eight we rode down the trail for three miles when I left my horse at a peasant's house.
He was completely done when we finally threw ourselves on the grass at the edge of the meadow which we had left in the morning. Hotenfa chanted his prayer when we opened the goral, but the God of the Hunt missed his offering for my bullet had smashed the heart to a pulp. On our way back to camp the red dog, although dead tired, disappeared alone into the heavy forest below us.
They told us that the goral were on a rocky, thinly forested mountain which rose two thousand feet above the valley, and for an hour and a half we climbed steadily upward. We were resting near the summit on the rim of a deep cañon when Hotenfa excitedly whispered, "gnai-yang" and held up three fingers.
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