Hope, wide eyed with consternation, was peering over the edge of the cliff as I came up, and together we watched the various members of the flock pull themselves together, flounder through to the opposite bank and make off into the alder thicket beyond. The game struggle of the old patriarch was splendid. The first to leap, his unfortunate anatomy, half buried in the yielding snow, had received the impact of more than a few of the flying hoofs and horns that followed. For four or five long minutes after the last of his mates had struggled through to safety he lay, stunned and bleeding, on a slender peninsula of firm snow that jutted out over the surging stream. As the sound of our voices, loud and tense with guilty anxiety, floated down to him, he roused, pulled himself together, and at almost the first flounder broke through and went whirling off in the clutch of the angry current. At the lower end of the cave-in his high-flung horns caught against the rim of soft ice, giving him a brief, but what we felt sure could be no more than a temporary, respite from an apparently certain fate. But we underrated the mettle of the brave old veteran, for even while his sturdy hind quarters drew down in the grip of the powerful undercurrent, one sharp fore hoof after the other gained hold on the trembling crust, and his sinewy body was almost lifted to safety before the sagging mass gave way again and left him struggling in the water. Twice, and then once again, was this same plucky man[oe]uvre repeated, but only to end each time in the same heart-breaking failure. Every fibre of rippling muscle seemed strained to the limit in his final effort, and when the soggy ice broke away it looked certain that the river was to be the victor after all. And such, no doubt, would have been the end had not the last cave-in carried the resolute old patriarch to a submerged bar of shingle. Here, rallying his seemingly inexhaustible strength, he gathered himself and leaped cleanly to a solid stretch of crust. A moment later he was off in the wake of the rest of his flock. With long-drawn breaths of relief we turned and tightened up the thongs of our ski for the climb out of the canyon. It was not until half an hour later, when we paused for rest on the _mesa_ rim, that Hope's drawling voice broke the silence that had held between us. "Young feller," he said jerkedly between breaths, "if the old one had drownded down there, the best thing you and I could do would be to jump in and be drownded with him. Even as it is, if the Super gets wind of that monkey show, it's me for a disonerable discharge and you for over the border." But as neither Hope nor I is inclined to do any talking, the chances seem good that we'll steer clear of the trouble we were so surely asking for. But no more ski-snapping for me, just the same. CHAPTER III HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS Grand Canyon Station, April 9.