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This story, “Flesh and Rock,” first appeared in the June 1953 issue of Outdoor Life.

Lying there on our bellies, we could stare over the brink of the precipice and figure how long it would take a boulder, pried loose from the top, to reach the sink of the valley below. Several seconds, probably. Through our 6X binoculars we watched an osprey hover over the wind-scuffed waters of Last Man Lake, then power-dive and come up with what looked like a half-pound rainbow trout in its claws. Without the binoculars we couldn’t see the fish hawk at all. That’s how high we were.

Northward, the 10,500-foot spire of Mount Tatlow seemed almost within hand touch. But that was only a trick of the clear altitude to which our goat had led us; Tatlow was a full 10 miles away as the crow flies.

Yes, we could see many things from the sheer spine of the cliff, things both near and far, but we could not see the goat. I wasn’t surprised, for I had never expected we would.

“Bit exasperating, isn’t it?” The Englishman had rolled over and now lay on his back, propped on his elbows. The remark came in his usual good-natured Oxford accent but I knew it barely covered the frustration that was eating him. And there was sound reason for that frustration. Three days in a row we had come out after the old man of the cliff, and three times in a row he had eluded us. We had yet to fire a shot.

Yes, we could see many things from the sheer spine of the cliff, things both near and far, but we could not see the goat. I wasn’t surprised, for I had never expected we would.

At first we tried to take him from below. I should have known better, for previous experience there in the Chilcotin district of British Columbia had taught me that not often will a goat be taken from below. But we tried it — zigzagged up from the valley floor until we stood at the base of the palisade upon which the goat bedded. From its shale-littered base it reared 2,500 feet above us, its wall as vertical as that of a skyscraper and made almost as smooth by centuries of spring run-offs and autumnal winds.

About halfway up the palisade the goat stared down from its precarious perch on a ledge.