Stent, working more slowly and methodically on his squared map paper, the smoke drifting fragrantly from his brier pipe, nodded in silence, glancing down now and then at the barometer and compass between them. "Mentioning big game," he remarked presently, "I started to tell you about the ibex, Jim. I’ve hunted a little in the Eastern Alps." "I didn’t know it," said Brown, interested. "Yes. A classmate of mine at the Munich Polytechnic invited me--Siurd von Glahn--a splendid fellow--educated at Oxford--just like one of us--nothing of the Boche about him at all----" Brown laughed: "A Boche is always a Boche, Harry. The black Prussian blood----" "No; Siurd was all white. Really. A charming, lovable fellow. Anyway, his dad had a shooting where there were chamois, reh, hirsch, and the king of all Alpine big game--ibex. And Siurd asked me." "Did you get an ibex?" inquired Brown, sharpening his pencil and glancing out across the valley at a cloud which had suddenly formed there. "I did." "What manner of beast is it?" "It has mountain sheep and goats stung to death. Take it from me, Jim, it’s the last word in mountain sport. The chamois isn’t in it. Pooh, I’ve seen chamois within a hundred yards of a mountain macadam highway. But the ibex? Not much! The man who stalks and kills an ibex has nothing more to learn about stalking. Chamois, red deer, Scotch stag make you laugh after you’ve done your bit in the ibex line." "How about our sheep and goat?" inquired Brown, staring at his comrade. "It’s harder to get ibex." "Nonsense!" "It really is, Jim." "What does your ibex resemble?" "It’s a handsome beast, ashy grey in summer, furred a brownish yellow in winter, and with little chin whiskers and a pair of big, curved, heavily ridged horns, thick and flat and looking as though they ought to belong to something African, and twice as big." "Some trophy, what?" commented Brown, working away at his sketches. "Rather. The devilish thing lives along the perpetual snow line; and, for incredible stunts in jumping and climbing, it can give points to any Rocky Mountain goat. You try to get above it, spend the night there, and stalk it when it returns from nocturnal grazing in the stunted growth below. That’s how." "And you got one?" "Yes. It took six days. We followed it for that length of time across the icy mountains, Siurd and I. I thought I’d die." "Cold work, eh?" Stent nodded, pocketed his sketch, fished out a packet of bread and chocolate from his pocket and, rolling over luxuriously in the sun among the alpine roses, lunched leisurely, flat on his back. Brown presently stretched out and reclined on his elbow; and while he ate he lazily watched a kestrel circling deep in the gulf below him. "I think," he said, half to himself, "that this is the most beautiful region on earth."