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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.

I wanted to rest the dogs for they were very tired from their two days of hunting, so I decided to return to camp with the men. On the way a second goral was started but it swung about the summit of the wooded ridge instead of coming in my direction, giving one of the hunters a shot with his crossbow, which he missed. It was a beautiful day.

We killed only one goral and a roebuck during the first two days, for a violent gale made hunting well-nigh impossible. On the third morning the sun rose in a sky as blue as the waters of a tropic sea, and not a breath of air stirred the silver poplar leaves as we crossed the rocky stream bed to the base of the mountains north of camp.

It was in the exact spot where my second goral had been started and we were on the qui vive when the rest of the pack dashed up the mountain-side to join their leader. In a few moments they all gave tongue and we heard them swinging about in our direction. Just then the clouds, which had been lying in a solid bank below us, began to drift upward in a long, thin finger toward the cañon.

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.

It was almost inconceivable that anything except a bird could move along the face of that cliff, and yet the goral ran apparently as easily as though it had been on level ground. I missed it beautifully and the animal disappeared into a cave among the rocks. Although I sent two bullets into the hole, hoping to drive out the beast, it would not move.

There was nothing to do but hurry down the mountain for the dogs might bring the goral to bay on one of the cliffs below us, and in twenty minutes we stood on a ridge which jutted out from the thick spruce forest. One of the hunters picked his way down the rock wall while Hotenfa and I circled the top of the spur.

Expecting that the goral would swing about the base of the peak the hunters sent me back across the talus to watch for a shot, but the animal ran down the valley and into a heavily wooded ravine where the dogs lost his trail only a short distance above camp. I returned to find that Heller had secured a rich haul from the traps.

In a few moments he shouted to me that he had fired at a big goral, but that it had disappeared behind the ridge and he was afraid it had not been hit. The old hunter, however, had seen the animal scramble into a tiny grove of pine trees. As it had not emerged, I was sure the goral was wounded, and when the men climbed up the cliff they found it dead, bored neatly through the center of the chest.

Although my beaters were not successful in putting out a goral, we heard Harry shoot once away to the right; and half an hour later I saw him through my binoculars accompanied by one of his men who carried a goral on his shoulders. On the way Harry disturbed a goral which ran down the sheer wall opposite to us at full speed, bouncing from rock to rock as though made of India rubber.