They could meet with
no game, and subsisted for a time on strips of beaver skin, broiled on
the coals. These were doled out in scanty allowances, barely sufficient
to keep up existence, and at length failed them altogether. Still they
crept feebly on, scarce dragging one limb after another, until a severe
snow-storm brought them to a pause. To struggle against it, in their
exhausted condition, was impossible, so cowering under an impending
rock at the foot of a steep mountain, they prepared themselves for that
wretched fate which seemed inevitable.
At this critical juncture, when famine stared them in the face, M'Lellan
casting up his eyes, beheld an ahsahta, or bighorn, sheltering itself
under a shelving rock on the side of the hill above them. Being in a
more active plight than any of his comrades, and an excellent marksman,
he set off to get within shot of the animal. His companions watched his
movements with breathless anxiety, for their lives depended upon his
success. He made a cautious circuit; scrambled up the hill with the
utmost silence, and at length arrived, unperceived, within a proper
distance. Here leveling his rifle he took so sure an aim, that the
bighorn fell dead on the spot; a fortunate circumstance, for, to pursue
it, if merely wounded, would have been impossible in his emaciated
state.
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