"There are more deer round Carberry now than ever before, and the Big
Stag has been seen between Kennedy's Plain and the mill." So said a note
that reached Yan away in the east where he had been chafing in a new and
distasteful life. It was the beginning of the hunting season, the fret
was already in his blood, and that letter decided him. For awhile the
iron horse, for awhile the gentle horse, then he donned his moosehide
wings and flew as of old on many a long hard flight to return as so
often before.
Then he heard that at a certain lake far to the eastward seven deer had
been seen; their leader a wonderful buck.
With three others he set out in a sleigh to the eastward lake and soon
found the tracks. Six of various sizes and one large one, undoubtedly
that of the famous Stag.
How utterly the veneer was torn to tatters by those seven chains of
tracks. How completely the wild paleolithic beast stood revealed in
each of the men, in spite of semi-modern garb, as they drove away on
the trail with a wild excited gleam in every eye.
[Illustration]
It was nearly night before the trail warmed up, but even then, in spite
of Yan's earnest protest, they drove on in the sleigh. And soon they
came to where the trail told of seven keen observers looking backward
from a hill, then an even sevenfold chain of twenty-five foot bounds.
The hunters got no glimpse at all, but followed till the night came
down, then hastily camped in the snow.
[Illustration: To scan the white world for his foe.—Page 203.]
In the morning they followed as before, and soon came to where seven
spots of black, bare ground showed where the deer had slept.
Now when the trail grew warm Yan insisted on hunting on foot. He trailed
the deer into a great thicket and knew just where they were by a grouse
that flew cackling from its farther side.
[Illustration]
He arranged a plan, but his friends would not await the blue-jay's
"all-right note," and the deer escaped. But finding themselves hard
pressed they split their band, two going one way and five another. Yan
kept with him one, Duff, and leaving the others to follow the five deer,
he took up the twofold trail. Why? Because in it was the great broad
track he had followed for two years back.
On they went, overtaking the deer and causing them to again split. Yan
sent Duff after the doe while he stuck relentlessly to the track of the
famous Stag. As the sun got low, the chase led to a great half-wooded
stretch, in a country new to him; for he had driven the Stag far from
his ancient range. The trail again grew hot, but just as Yan felt sure
he soon would close, two distant shots were heard and the track of the
Stag as he found it then went off in a fear-winged flight that might
keep on for miles.
Yan went at a run and soon found Duff. He had had two long shots at the
doe.
[Illustration]
The second he thought had hit her. Within half a mile they found blood on
the trail; within another half mile the blood was no more seen and the
track seemed to have grown very large and strong. The snow was drifting
and the marks not easily read, yet Yan knew very soon that the track
they were on was not that of the wounded doe, but was surely that of her
antlered mate. Back on the trail they ran till they solved the doubt, for
there they learned that the Stag, after making his own escape, had come
back to change off; an old, old trick of the hunted whereby one deer will
cleverly join on and carry on the line of tracks to save another that
is too hard pressed, while it leaps aside to hide or fly in a different
direction. Thus the Stag had sought to save his wounded mate, but the
hunters remorselessly took up her trail and gloated like wolves over the
slight drip of blood. Within another short run they found that the Stag,
having failed to divert the chase to himself, had returned to her, and
at sundown they sighted them a quarter of a mile ahead mounting a long
snow slope. The doe was walking slowly with hanging head and ears. The
Buck was running about as though in trouble that he did not understand,
and coming back to caress the doe and wonder why she walked so slowly.
In another half mile the hunters came up with them. She was down in the
snow. When he saw them coming, the great Stag shook the oak-tree on his
brow and circled about in doubt, then fled from a foe he was powerless
to resist.
As the men came near, the doe made a convulsive effort to rise, but
could not. Duff drew his knife. It never before occurred to Yan why he
and each of them carried a long knife. The poor doe turned on her foes
her great lustrous eyes; they were brimming with tears, but she made
no moan. Yan turned his back on the scene and covered his face with
his hands, but Duff went forward with the knife and did some dreadful,
unspeakable thing, Yan scarcely knew what, and when Duff called him
he slowly turned, and the big Stag's mate was lying quiet in the snow,
and the only living thing that they saw as they quit the scene was the
great round form bearing aloft the oak-tree on its brow as it haunted
the nearer hills.
And when, an hour later, the men came with the sleigh to lift the doe's
body from the crimsoned snow, there were large fresh tracks about it,
and a dark shadow passed over the whitened hill into the silent night.
* * * * *
What morbid thoughts came from the fire that night. How the man
in Yan did taunt the glutted brute. Was this the end? Was this the real
chase? After long weeks, with the ideal alone in mind, after countless
blessed failures, was this the vile success a beautiful, glorious, living
creature tortured into a loathsome mass of carrion?