No one can appreciate the feeling of relaxed relief that filled me.  Hard and dangerous climbs, killing work, considerable hardship and discomfort had at length their reward.  I could now take a rest.  The day was young, and I contemplated with something like rapture a return to camp, and a good puttery day skinning out that goat.  In addition I was suffering now from a splitting headache, the effects of incipient snow-blindness, and was generally pretty wobbly.

And then my eye wandered to the left, whence that goat had come.  I saw a large splash of blood; at a spot before I had fired!  It was too evident that the goat had already been wounded by Fisher; and therefore, by hunter’s law, belonged to him!

I set my teeth and turned up the mountain to regain the descent we had just made.  At the knife-edge top I stopped for a moment to get my breath and to survey the country.  Diagonally across the basin where the wolves were howling, half way down the ridge running at right angles to my own, I made out two goats.  They were two miles away from me on an air line.  My course was obvious.  I must proceed along my ridge to the Citadel, keeping always out of sight; surmount that fortress; descend to the second ridge; walk along the other side of it until I was above those goats, and then sneak down on them.

I accomplished the first two stages of my journey all right, though with considerably more difficulty in spots than I should have anticipated.  The knife edge was so sharp and the sides so treacherous that at times it was almost impossible to travel anywhere but right on top.  This would not do.  By a little planning, however, I managed to reach the central “keep” of the Citadel:  a high, bleak, broken pile, flat on top, with snow in all the crevices, and small cliffs on all sides.  From this advantage I could cautiously spy out the lay of the land.

Below me fifty feet dipped the second ridge, running nearly at right angles.  It sloped abruptly to the wolf basin, but fell sheer on the other side to depths I could not at that time guess.[D] A very few scattered, stunted, and twisted trees huddled close down to the rock and snow.  This saddle was about fifty feet in width and perhaps five hundred yards in length.  It ended in another craggy butte very much like the Citadel.

My first glance determined that my original plan would not do.  The goats had climbed from where I had first seen them, and were now leisurely topping the saddle.  To attempt to descend would be to reveal myself.  I was forced to huddle just where I was.  My hope was that the goats would wander along the saddle toward me, and not climb the other butte opposite.  Also I wanted them to hurry, please, as the snow in which I sat was cold, and the wind piercing.

This apparently they were not inclined to do.  They paused, they nibbled at some scanty moss, they gazed at the scenery, they scratched their ears.  I shifted my position cautiously—­and saw below me,[E] lying on the snow at the very edge of the cliff, a tremendous billy!  He had been there all the time; and I had been looking over him!