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The year went by. Another season came, and Yan felt in his heart the
hunter fret once more. Even had he not, the talk he heard would have
set him all afire.
It told of a mighty buck that now lived in the hills--the Sandhill
Stag they called him. It told of his size, his speed, and the crowning
glory that he bore on his brow, a marvellous growth like sculptured
bronze with gleaming ivory points.
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So when the first tracking snow came, Yan set out with some comrades
who had caught a faint reflected glow of his ardor. They drove in a
sleigh to the Spruce Hill, then scattered to meet again at sunset. The
woods about abounded in hares and grouse, and the powder burned all
around. But no deer-track was to be found, so Yan quietly left the
woods and set off alone for Kennedy's Plain, where last this wonderful
buck had been seen.
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After a few miles he came on a great deer-track, so large and sharp
and broken by such mighty bounds that he knew it at once for the trail
of the Sandhill Stag.
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With a sudden rush of strength to his limbs he led away like a wolf on
the trail. And down his spine and in his hair he felt as before, and
yet as never before, the strange prickling that he knew was the same
as makes the wolf's mane bristle when he hunts. He followed till night
was near and he must needs turn, for the Spruce Hill was many miles
away.
He knew that it would be long after sunset before he could get there,
and he scarcely expected that his comrades would wait for him, but he
did not care; he gloried in the independence of his strength, for his
legs were like iron and his wind was like a hound's. Ten miles were
no more to him than a mile to another man, for he could run all day
and come home fresh, and always when alone in the lone hills he felt
within so glad a gush of wild exhilaration that his joy was full.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
So when his friends, feeling sure that he could take care of himself,
drove home and left him, he was glad to be left. They seemed rather to
pity him for imposing on himself such long, toilsome tramps. They had
no realization of what he found in those wind-swept hills. They never
once thought what they and all their friends and every man that ever
lived has striven for and offered his body, his brain, his freedom,
and his life to buy; what they were vainly wearing out their lives in
fearful, hopeless drudgery to gain, that boy was daily finding in
those hills. The bitter, biting, blizzard wind was without, but the
fire of health and youth was within; and at every stride in his daily
march, it was _happiness_ he found, and he knew it. And he smiled such
a gentle smile when he thought of those driven home in the sleigh
shivering and miserable, _yet pitying him_.
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Oh, what a glorious sunset he saw that day on Kennedy's Plain, with
the snow dyed red and the poplar woods aglow in pink and gold! What a
glorious tramp through the darkening woods as the shadows fell and
the yellow moon came up!
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"These are the best days of my life," he sang. "These are my golden
days!"
And as he neared the great Spruce Hill, Yan yelled a long hurrah! "In
case they are still there," he told himself, but really for very joy
of feeling all alive.
As he listened for the improbable response, he heard a faint howling
of wolves away over Kennedy's Plain. He mimicked their cry and quickly
got response, and noticed that they were gathering together, doubtless
hunting something, for now it was their hunting-cry. Nearer and nearer
it came, and his howls brought ready answers from the gloomy echoing
woods, when suddenly it flashed upon him: "It's _my_ trail you are on.
_You are hunting me._"
[Illustration: "Sat down in the Moonlit Snow."]
The road now led across a little open plain. It would have been
madness to climb a tree in such a fearful frost, so he went out to the
middle of the open place and sat down in the moonlit snow--a
glittering rifle in his hands, a row of shining brass pegs in his
belt, and a strange, new feeling in his heart. On came the chorus, a
deep, melodious howling, on to the very edge of the woods, and there
the note changed. Then there was silence. They must have seen him
sitting there, for the light was like day, but they went around in
the edge of the woods. A stick snapped to the right and a low '_Woof_'
came from the left. Then all was still. Yan felt them sneaking around,
felt them watching him from the cover, and strained his eyes in vain
to see some form that he might shoot. But they were wise, and he was
wise, for had he run he would soon have seen them closing in on him.
They must have been but few, for after their council of war they
decided he was better let alone, and he never saw them at all. For
twenty minutes he waited, but hearing no more of them, arose and went
homeward. And as he tramped he thought, "Now I know how a deer feels
when the grind of a moccasined foot or the click of a lock is heard
in the trail behind him."
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[Illustration]
In the days that followed he learned those Sandhills well, for many a
frosty day and bitter night he spent in them. He learned to follow
fast the faintest trail of deer. He learned just why that trail went
never past a tamarack-tree, and why it pawed the snow at every oak,
and why the buck's is plainest and the fawn's down wind. He learned
just what the club-rush has to say, when its tussocks break the snow.
He came to know how the musk-rat lives beneath the ice, and why the
mink slides down a hill, and what the ice says when it screams at
night. The squirrels taught him how best a fir-cone can be stripped
and which of toadstools one might eat. The partridge, why it dives
beneath the snow, and the fox, just why he sets his feet so straight,
and why he wears so huge a tail.
[Illustration]
He learned the ponds, the woods, the hills, and a hundred secrets of
the trail, but--_he got no deer_.
And though many a score of crooked frosty miles he coursed, and
sometimes had a track to lead and sometimes none, he still went on,
like Galahad when the Grail was just before him. For more than once,
the guide that led was the trail of the Sandhill Stag.