Carefully I worked up toward him. Several times he bleated for his mother and shifted his position. Every moment I feared he would lose his footing and plunge down the rock face. Twenty feet below I stopped because I could climb no higher. Carefully I turned about and faced the wall, hugging it as closely as possible. Holding the camera at arm's length, and pointing it straight up, I sprung the shutter. The click, slight as it was, startled the lamb. He leaped several feet to another nub of rock, teetered precariously several seconds, then suddenly his pedestal broke off. Sheep and rock dropped straight toward me. To avoid the rock, I sprang sideways. The sheep plunged down upon me as the rock hurtled past. Together we revolved, that sheep and I, the camera being abandoned in midair to shift for itself. Together the struggling youngster and I struck the rock, slid and bounded outward, turning over as we fell, first one on top, then the other, until at length I clutched a bush growing out of a crevice in the slide and stopped myself; but the lamb continued his bouncing fall down the mountain. In all, he must have rolled three hundred feet before he stopped, his feet sticking up out of the brush like the legs of an overturned bench. [Illustration: Sheep and rock dropped straight toward me.] It was some time before I was able to walk. But as quickly as possible I went to the rescue of that sheep because I had caused his downfall. He was still breathing, but unable to stand. With great effort, for he was heavy and I was shaking from my fall, I carried him down to the stream and soused him in its icy water. He revived at once. The camera had smashed to pieces before it finished its bouncing flight down the mountain. After all, it was a great experience, and though it cost me my camera, some of my hide and most of my clothes, I wouldn't have missed it for all Kit Carson's priceless furs! CHAPTER SIX A LOG CABIN IN THE WILDS--PRIMITIVE LIVING At last, that long-anticipated day dawned, when my dream cabin became a reality. High upon a shoulder of Twin Sisters Mountain, a thousand feet above the floor of the valley, where Parson Lamb's ranch stood, overlooking the ruins of Kit Carson's own cabin, I built it. Across the valley, towered Long's Peak and its lofty neighbors. Forty miles of snowcapped peaks were at my dooryard, and beyond, toward the rising sun, hazy plains stretched away to the illimitable horizon. Between its craggy shoulder and the main body of the mountain, lay an unsuspected, wedge-shaped valley, down which a little brook went gurgling. There ancient spruce and yellow pine and quaking aspens grew in sheltered luxuriance.