[Illustration: The Trail Spring.]
I
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 sun
heat, 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.
[Illustration]
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."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 all doubt. 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
sawmill, then over Mitchell's Plain, and at last into the thick poplar
woods near by, 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.
[Illustration]
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]
How they did seem to _look_ with their great ears! How they spellbound
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.
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 it was bewildering to see the
wonderful effortless way in which, by a tiny toe-touch, they would
rise six or eight feet in air. 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.
[Illustration: "Wingless Birds."]
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 some 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 a while come
down again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs.
* * * * *
"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 seen it,
or he would have told of it."
[Illustration]