[Illustration]
"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 a
while the iron horse, for a while 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.
[Illustration]
Then he heard that at a certain lake far to the eastward seven deer
had been seen; their leader a wonderful buck.
[Illustration: "Seven Deer, ... 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!
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.
In the morning they followed as before, and soon came to where seven
spots of black, bare ground showed where the deer had slept.
[Illustration]
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.
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 again to 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Yan went at a run, and soon found Duff. He had had two long shots at
the doe. 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.
[Illustration: "The Doe was walking slowly."]
[Illustration]
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?
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