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Alaska Days with John Muir
Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes, bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "Go up and get us a kid. It will be a great addition to our larder."
He took my breech-loading rifle and went. In the afternoon he returned with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining it he said:
"I picked the fattest and most tender of those that I killed."
"What!" I exclaimed, "did you kill more than this one?"
He put up both hands with fingers extended and then one finger:
