We climbed slowly toward the cliffs until we were well above the clouds, which lay in a thick white blanket over the camp, and headed for the canon where I had shot my second goral.  Hotenfa wished to go lower down into the forests but I prevailed upon him to stay along the open slopes and, while we were resting, the big red dog suddenly gave tongue on a ridge above and to the right of us.  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 canon.  On and on it came, and closer sounded the yelps of the dogs.  I was trembling with impatience and swearing softly as the gray vapor streamed into the gorge.  The cloud thickened, sweeping rapidly up the ravine, until we were enveloped so completely that I could hardly see the length of my gun barrel.  A moment later we heard the goral leaping down the cliff not a hundred yards away.

With the rifle useless in my hands I listened to each hoof beat and the stones which his flying feet sent rattling into the gorge.  Then the dogs came past, and we heard them follow down the rocks, their yelps growing fainter and fainter in the valley far below.  The goral was lost, and as though the Fates were laughing at us, ten minutes later a puff of wind sucked the cloud out of the canon as swiftly as it had come, and above us shone a sky as clear and blue as a tropic sea.

Hotenfa’s disgust more than equaled my own for I had loaned him my three-barrel gun (12 gauge and .303 Savage) and he was as excited as a child with a new toy.  He was a remarkably intelligent man and mastered the safety catches in a short time even though he had never before seen a breach-loading gun.

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.

We had not gone a hundred yards when the hunter shouted that a goral was running in our direction.  Hotenfa reached the edge of the ridge before me, and I saw him fire with the three-barrel gun at a goral which disappeared into the brush.  His bullet struck the dirt only a few feet behind the animal although it must have been well beyond a hundred yards and almost straight below us.

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.  We ought to have come here first.”