FRANK KILLS A DEER
They plodded through the bush for an hour or two without seeing any
living thing except a few pigeons, and Harry began to look doubtful.
"If it was early morning, I'd try one of the rock outcrops where nothing
grows," he observed. "The deer get up on to those places out of the dew
then. As it's afternoon, I don't know which way to head."
Frank glanced at his clothes. Keen as he was on hunting, he would not
have been sorry to head for home, for his duck trousers were badly torn
and one of his boots which had been rather the worse for wear when he
started was almost dropping off his foot. They trudged on, however, and
accident favored them, as it often does when one is hunting, for at last
when they were in very thick bush Harry dropped suddenly behind a patch
of withered fern.
"Look there!" he said softly. "Right ahead of you yonder."
Frank gazed ahead with straining eyes, but he could only see the great
trunks stretching back in serried ranks. He had heard somewhat to his
astonishment that it is not often that a novice can see a deer in the
bush even when it is pointed out to him, but now, it seemed, the thing
was true. He could have declared that there was not a deer anywhere
within the range of his vision.
"Right in front," whispered Harry, impatiently. "About seventy yards
off. Oh, look yonder!"
He stretched his hand out and at last Frank noticed what seemed to be a
very slightly different colored strip of something behind a narrow
opening in a thicket. It might have been withering fern, or a cluster of
fading leaves, but he would never have imagined it to be a portion of a
deer. Then his doubts vanished, for it suddenly moved.
"Where shall I shoot?" he asked beneath his breath.
"At the bottom of the bit you can see," was the low answer.
Frank threw up his rifle. He was too eager to kneel or lie down, and it
scarcely seemed probable that the deer would wait until he was
comfortably ready. He lined the sights on a twig immediately in front of
the object, and though his hands had quivered he found them growing
steadier as he squeezed the trigger. He heard no report, but there was a
crash in the thicket as the smoke came drifting back, and Harry ran
forward with a shout.
"Come on!" he cried. "You've hit it!"
Frank ran his fastest, though running of any kind was extraordinarily
difficult. In places the withered fern was higher than his head and
there seemed to be innumerable bushes in his way, while when he
endeavored to avoid them he generally came upon a giant tree which had
to be scrambled around. Still, there was no doubt that the deer was not
far off, for he could hear it floundering through the brakes and fern,
and by and by he came upon a trail of red splashes scattered here and
there upon the leaves.
"It's hit bad," panted Harry. "If we can hold out we'll get it yet."
They did their utmost for the next half hour, but they never once saw
the deer, which by the decreasing sound seemed to be drawing away from
them, and Frank felt that it would be impossible for him to keep up the
pace many minutes longer. He was breathless, and dripping with
perspiration, and his clothes were torn all over. Indeed, eager as he
was, it was almost a relief when the sound in front of him gradually
died away, and Harry stopped, gasping, and leaned against a fir.
"What are we going to do about it now?" Frank asked.
"Trail that deer," was the breathless answer. "It's not going very far.
You can tell by the noise it made that it was hit too bad to jump."
Frank was of the opinion that it had gone quite far enough already, but
he silently watched Harry, who began to walk up and down, looking
carefully about him.
"It went through this bush," he said at length. "After that it must have
crossed the fern yonder." Then scrambling forward he waved his hand.
"Come on! The trail's quite plain."
Frank followed him with some trouble and once more saw the red splashes
on the leaves. Now and then they lost them for a little while and the
undergrowth did not seem to have been disturbed, but on each occasion
Harry contrived to find the spots again. He traced them from place to
place, moving more slowly and cautiously, while Frank painfully broke
through the thickets in his wake. They were both nearly exhausted when
an hour after the shot was fired they came to a little creek.
"It lay down here," said Harry. "We'll stop a minute or two. Guess that
deer's 'most as played out as we are."
This seemed very probable to Frank as he glanced at the broad red smear
upon the damp soil, and for the first time he was troubled by a sense of
compunction as he realized that there were two sides to hunting. The
pursuers' labor was severe enough, but he could imagine what the flight
must have cost the sorely wounded creature who had so far managed to
keep in front of them. He was scratched and torn and exhausted, but at
least he was sound in limb, while the deer must have staggered on in
anguished terror with its life steadily draining from the cruel bullet
hole. Somewhere in his mind there was now a wish that he had not made so
good a shot.
"Do you think we're far behind it?" he asked.
"I don't, but that doesn't count," answered Harry. "We have to follow
it, anyway. I remember when I got my first deer. Dad was with me, and
before I fired he asked if I thought I could hit it where I wanted. I
said I did, and he told me to make sure, because if the beast got away
with a bullet in it I'd have to trail it until it dropped." He stopped
with a significant laugh. "As it happened, we followed it close on three
hours, through the thickest kind of bush, and--I wasn't so big then--it
was mighty hard work to get back to the ranch afterward."
Frank fancied that in the present case he might drop before the deer
did, though he realized that Mr. Oliver's rule was in one way a merciful
one and undoubtedly calculated to encourage careful shooting. When he
had recovered his breath a little they started again, but it was half an
hour later when they caught a glimpse of the deer painfully laboring
through a clump of fern on the slope of a steep rise. Harry pitched up
his rifle, and though the animal disappeared again immediately after
they fired, they knew it was still going on by the snapping of twigs and
the rustling in the fern.
Harry was sure that he had hit it, and making a last effort, they broke
into a run which Frank remembered for a considerable time afterward. The
slope seemed to be getting remarkably steep, he could scarcely see a
dozen yards in front of him through the undergrowth, and several times
he stuck fast for a moment or two in tangled thickets. Then he fell into
a horrible tangle of rotting branches, dropping his rifle and bruising
himself cruelly, and he only succeeded in forcing himself along because
his companion shouted breathlessly that the deer was rapidly flagging.
Frank could hear it very plainly now.
At last when they reached the summit of the rise it came out into open
view for a moment. The bush was thinner there, with less growth between
the trees, and he saw the animal limp out from a thicket, dragging an
injured limb. He flung up his rifle, and Harry who was a little in front
fired almost as he did. The deer staggered, made a feeble bound, and
vanished as if the earth had opened under it. A moment or two later
Harry stopped with a hoarse, gasping shout.
Frank stumbled forward and found him standing on the brink of what
seemed to be a very deep ravine, the almost precipitous sides of which
were shrouded in young firs and densely growing bushes. Harry was gazing
dubiously into the gully.
"I don't quite know how we're going to get down, but we'll have to try,"
he said. "The deer's at the bottom done for, and I don't feel like going
home and telling dad we left it. Besides, it's quite likely he might
send us back for it."
"Then if it has to be done, we may as well get about it," said Frank
wearily.
Slinging his rifle, he crawled over the edge and went sliding and
slipping down for about a dozen yards until he fell into the branches of
a young fir. After that he plunged into several bushes before he could
stop again, and eventually lowered himself foot by foot, clutching at
whatever seemed strong enough to hold him, until he alighted knee-deep
in a splashing creek. Nearby the deer lay motionless where it had fallen
upon the stones. It was a beautifully symmetrical creature, but it
seemed to Frank smaller than he had expected.
"A young black-tail," said Harry. "Anyway, that's what we call them,
though I believe it's really the mule-deer. There's another black-tail.
We've got the deer names kind of mixed up on the Pacific Slope."
Frank regarded the animal dubiously. "It seems to me the most important
question is how we're going to get it home."
"Pack it," answered Harry. "But I'd better open it up first. You can sit
down while I do it, if you'd rather."
Frank would very much have preferred to sit down out of sight while the
deer was dressed, but it occurred to him that it would scarcely be
fitting to leave the disagreeable part of the work to his companion.
"No," he persisted, "I'll help as much as I can."
"Well," said Harry dryly, "if you want to go hunting it's a thing you'll
have to learn."
The operations that followed were singularly unpleasant, and Frank felt
a good deal less enthusiastic about hunting when he washed his hands and
the sleeves of his jacket in the creek after they were over.
"I don't know if I'll eat any of that deer," he said.
"You'll get over it," Harry assured him with a smile. "Anyway, in my
opinion deer meat isn't much of a delicacy. It's that stringy you could
'most make lariats of it, unless you keep it until it's bad."
Frank felt inclined later to agree with this statement, but in the
meanwhile Harry got the deer, which he had not yet skinned, upon his
shoulders with its fore legs pulled over in front of him, and they
started back for the ranch. It was, however, some time before they could
find a way out of the gulch, and then they only gained the summit by an
arduous scramble. After that they found themselves in exceedingly thick
bush, with nothing that Frank could see to guide them. There was
probably not much light at any time down among those great trunks whose
branches met and crossed high overhead, and what there was seemed to be
getting dim.
"If we keep on going down we'll strike something by and by," urged
Harry. "The slope's naturally toward the beach."
The first thing they struck was a remarkably steep hillside, up which
they struggled, Frank now carrying the deer, which he found heavy enough
before he reached the top. Then a narrow valley opened up before them,
which did not seem to be what Harry had expected. There were one or two
ponds in the bottom of it, and he gazed at them thoughtfully.
"We might get a duck," he mused. "They ought to be coming down from
Alaska now. It's freezing up there."
They floundered down the declivity, and, though Frank would have
preferred to push on straight for home, Harry insisted on creeping
through the long harsh grass about the edge of the water. They tried one
of the ponds with no result, but at last Harry dropped suddenly behind a
tall clump of grass.
"Look!" he said. "There are two or three ducks yonder. You take the
nearest. Keep the foresight as fine as you can."
Frank saw one or two small objects floating just outside the grass
across the pond. They seemed to be a very long way off, and though he
feared that he could not keep the sights upon any of them standing, the
ground looked horribly quaggy to kneel in. This could not be helped,
however, for it seemed that getting wet and torn did not count when one
was hunting, and he pressed his right knee down into the mire. He could
just see one of the ducks when he closed his left eye, and he had
misgivings as to the result when he squeezed the trigger. Harry's rifle
flashed immediately after his, there was a rattle of wings and a
startled quacking, and he saw two ducks with long necks stretched out
fly off above the trees. Another seemed to be lying on the water, and
remembering the size of the bullet, he had no fear of that one getting
away.
"The next thing is to get it," said Harry. "It's not going to be easy."
He was perfectly right. They spent a long while struggling around the
pond, into which they had to wade nearly waist-deep before Harry
contrived to rake the duck in toward him with the muzzle of his rifle.
It did not look a sightly object when he had secured it, but he decided
that there was enough of it left to eat.
"Is it the one you shot at?" he asked with a grin.
"I can't say," Frank answered. "I shouldn't be surprised if it wasn't."
"Well," said Harry, "we're not going to quarrel about the thing. What we
have to do is to make a bee-line home. We'll come along again in a week
or two. The ponds are full of ducks for a little in the spring and
fall."
"Only then?"
"They're not so plentiful between-whiles," Harry answered. "Of course,
our worst winters aren't marked by the cold snaps you have back East,
and quite a few of the ducks stay with us, while some put in the summer,
too; but in a general way every swimming bird of any size heads north to
the tundra marshes by the Polar Sea in spring. In the fall they come
back again, how far I don't know--lower California, Mexico, perhaps,
right away to Bolivia and Peru. Going and coming, the big flocks stop
around here to rest a while." He smiled at his companion. "A mallard
duck's a little thing, but he covers a considerable sweep of country."
He picked up the deer and they went on again, but darkness overtook them
before they reached the ranch, utterly worn out, with most of their
garments rent to tatters; and Frank, who had carried the deer the last
mile or two, gave a gasp of relief when he laid it down.