After the group on the porch had talked matters over for about two hours, they all went to their respective homes excepting old Mr. Tucker, whom the family had invited to stay all night. As it was but eight o'clock when the others left, Joe and Mr. Tucker turned to the subject of hunting big game, and the latter told some of his own adventures when he was a trapper in the Rocky Mountains many years ago. As Joe had never seen the bighorn of that region, Mr. Tucker related an adventure he once had when hunting for a pair of young ones. He was up in the Yellowstone Range, not very far from the scene of Custer's unequal battle with Sitting Bull, in which the General's entire command was annihilated by the savages. "My camp was on the Green River," began the old man, "and one morning while I was out baiting my traps, I noticed a she bighorn that I knew would soon have little ones. I was determined to have a pair of kids, as I had a sort of a small menagerie at my camp, but it contained no bighorn. So I started to follow her trail and stay with her until her kids were born, when I intended to capture them and make pets of them. "I followed her for about two weeks, and was sometimes compelled to creep cautiously after her in my stockinged feet. My stockings were clumsy things made of buckskin, not such stockings as you buy. One evening being so near her, and obliged to climb a steep mountain, I took out my knife and cut off all the silver trimmings of my buckskin suit, so that nothing could jingle and scare her. "At last, after tracking her day after day, I came upon her den, where she had brought forth two kids. It was the very top of one of the tallest peaks in the Wind River Mountains, in a sort of cave about five feet deep, worn in the side of an enormous rock. When I first got a sight of the kids, they were nearly two weeks old, and were jumping and playing as all of the goat or sheep family are wont to do. "They were alone, but their mother was on the brink of a precipice, within a hundred yards of them, carefully looking down into the valley below to see if she could discover anything hostile. They are great watchers. The old one had not seen me, and I had made a détour to the very summit of the mountain, where I could see that there was a trail which the mother used to travel in going to and from her young ones. I felt sure that once at the mouth of the cave or hole in the big rock, I might easily capture the kids, for which I had footed it so many miles and followed so many days.