[Illustration]
It was a burning hot day. Yan was wandering in pursuit of birds among
the endless groves and glades of the Sandhill wilderness about Carberry.
The water in the numerous marshy ponds was warm with the sunheat, so
Yan cut across to the trail spring, the only place in the country where
he might find a cooling drink. As he stooped beside it his eye fell on
a small hoof-mark in the mud, a sharp and elegant track. He had never
seen one like it before, but it gave him a thrill, for he knew at once
it was the track of a _wild deer_.
"There are no deer in those hills now," the settlers told Yan. Yet when
the first snow came that autumn he, remembering the hoof-mark in the
mud, quietly took down his rifle and said to himself, "I am going into
the hills every day till I bring out a deer." Yan was a tall, raw lad
in the last of his teens. He was no hunter yet, but he was a tireless
runner, and filled with unflagging zeal. Away to the hills he went on his
quest, day after day, and many a score of long white miles he coursed,
and night after night he returned to the shanty without seeing even a
track. But the longest chase will end. On a far, hard trip in the southern
hills he came at last on the trail of a deer—dim and stale, but still
a deer-trail—and again he felt a thrill as the thought came, "At the
other end of that line of dimples in the snow is the creature that made
them; each one is fresher than the last, and it is only a question of
time for me to come up with their maker."
At first Yan could not tell by the dim track which way the animal had
gone. But he soon found that the mark was a little sharper at one end,
and rightly guessed that that was the toe; also he noticed that the
spaces shortened in going up hill, and at last a clear imprint in a
sandy place ended the doubt.
[Illustration]
Away he went with a new fire in his blood, and an odd prickling in his
hair; away on a long hard follow through interminable woods and hills,
with the trail growing fresher as he flew. All day he followed, and toward
night it turned and led him homeward. On it went, soon over familiar
ground, back to the saw-mill, then over Mitchell's Plain, and at last
into the thick poplar woods nearby, where Yan left it when it was too
dark to follow. He was only seven miles from home, and this he easily
trotted in an hour.
In the morning he was back to take it up, but instead of an old track,
there were now so many fresh ones, crossing and winding, that he could
not follow at all. So he prowled along haphazard, until he found two
tracks so new that he could easily trail them as before, and he eagerly
gave chase.
As he sneaked along watching the tracks at his feet instead of the woods
ahead, he was startled by two big-eared, grayish animals, springing from
a little glade into which he had stumbled. They trotted to a bank fifty
yards away and then turned to gaze at him.
[Illustration: The way they would rise in air by a tiny toe-touch was
bewildering.—Page 193.]
How they did seem to _look_ with their great ears. How they spell-bound
him by the soft gaze that he felt rather than saw! He knew what they were.
Had he not for weeks been holding ready, preparing and hungering for
this very sight! And yet how useless were his preparations; how wholly
all his preconcepts were swept away, and a wonder-stricken "Oh-h-h!"
went softly from his throat.
[Illustration: Straining his eyes in vain to see some form that he
might shoot.—Page 196.]
As he stood and gazed, they turned their heads away, though they still
seemed to look at him with their great ears, and trotting a few steps
to a smoother place, began to bound up and down in a sort of play.
They seemed to have forgotten him, and the wonderful effortless way in
which they would rise six or eight feet in air by a tiny toe-touch was
bewildering. Yan stood fascinated by the strange play of the light-limbed,
gray-furred creatures.
There was no haste or alarm in their movements, he would watch them
until they began to run away—till they should take fright and begin the
labored straining, the vast athletic bounds, he had heard of. And it was
only on noting that they were rapidly fading into the distance that he
realized that _now_ they were running away, _already_ were flying for
safety.
Higher and higher they rose each time; gracefully their bodies swayed
inward as they curved along some bold ridge, or for a long space the
buff-white 'scutcheons that they bore behind them seemed hanging in the
air, while these wingless birds were really sailing over a deep gully.
Yan stood intensely gazing until they were out of sight, and it never
once occurred to him to shoot.
When they were gone he went to the place where they had begun their
play. Here was one track, where was the next? He looked all around and
was surprised to see a blank for fifteen feet; and then another blank,
and on farther, another: then the blanks increased to eighteen feet,
then to twenty, then to twenty-five and sometimes thirty feet. Each of
these playful, effortless bounds covered a space of eighteen to thirty
feet.
Gods above! They do not run at all, they fly; and once in awhile come
down again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs.
[Illustration]
"I'm glad they got away," said Yan. "They've shown me something to-day
that never man saw before. I know that no one else has ever, ever seen
it, or he would have told of it."
[Illustration: Seven deer had been seen; their leader a wonderful
buck.—Page 199.]