Dan and Lennox started together up the long slope of the ridge. Dan
alone was armed; Lennox went with him solely as a guide. The deer season
had just opened, and it might be that Dan would want to procure one of
these creatures.
"But I'm not sure I want to hunt deer," Dan told him. "You speak of them
as being so beautiful--"
"They are beautiful, and your grandfather would never hunt them either,
except for meat. But maybe you'll change your mind when you see a buck.
Besides, we might run into a lynx or a panther. But not very likely,
without dogs."
They trudged up, over the carpet of pine needles. They fought their way
through a thicket of buckbrush. Once they saw the gray squirrels in the
tree tops. And before Lennox had as much as supposed they were near the
haunts of big game, a yearling doe sprang up from its bed in the
thickets.
For an instant she stood motionless, presenting a perfect target. It was
evident that she had heard the sound of the approaching hunters, but had
not as yet located or identified them with her near-sighted eyes. Lennox
whirled to find Dan standing very still, peering along the barrel of his
rifle. But he didn't shoot. A light danced in his eyes, and his fingers
crooked nervously about the trigger, but yet there was no pressure. The
deer, seeing Lennox move, leaped into her terror-pace,--that astounding
run that is one of the fastest gaits in the whole animal world. In the
wink of an eye, she was out of sight.
"Why didn't you shoot?" Lennox demanded.
"Shoot? It was a doe, wasn't it?"
"Good Lord, of course it was a doe! But there are no game laws that go
back this far. Besides--you aimed at it."
"I aimed just to see if I could catch it through my sights. And I could.
My glasses sort of made it blur--but I think--perhaps--that I could have
shot it. But I'm not going to kill does. There must be some reason for
the game laws, or they wouldn't exist."
"You're a funny one. Come three thousand miles to hunt and then pass up
the first deer you see. You could almost have been your grandfather, to
have done that. He thought killing a deer needlessly was almost as bad
as killing a man. They are beautiful things, aren't they?"
Dan answered him with startling emphasis. But the look that he wore said
more than his words.
They trudged on, and Lennox grew thoughtful. He was recalling the
picture that he had seen when he had whirled to look at Dan, immediately
after the deer had leaped from its bed. It puzzled him a little. He had
turned to find the younger man in a perfect posture to shoot, his feet
placed in exactly the position that years of experience had taught
Lennox was correct; and withal, absolutely motionless. Of all the many
things to learn in the wilderness, to stand perfectly still in the
presence of game is one of the hardest. The natural impulse is to
start,--a nervous reflex that usually terrifies the game. The principle
of standing still is, of course, that it takes a certain length of time
for the deer to look about after it makes its first leap from its bed,
and if the hunter is motionless, the deer is usually unable to identify
him as a thing to fear. It gives a better chance for a shot. What many
hunters take years to learn, Dan had seemed to know by instinct. Could
it be, after all, that this slender weakling, even now bowed down with
a terrible malady, had inherited the true frontiersman's instincts of
his ancestors?
Then all at once Lennox halted in his tracks, evidently with no other
purpose than to study the tall form that now was walking up the trail in
front of him. And he uttered a little exclamation of amazement.
"Listen, Dan!" he cried suddenly. "Haven't you ever been in the woods
before?"