"Are you trying to beat yourself out of seventy-five dollars? I did
promise you twenty-five dollars for every inch in its longest tine, if I
got a head that satisfied me! This is surely the one!"
Ted grinned. "I'll dress it for you," he offered.
He turned the buck over, made a slit with his hunting knife and pulled
the viscera out. At once it became evident that John Wilson was the
second hunter of whom Pythias had run afoul, for he had been wounded
before. Ted probed interestedly. Entering the flank, the bullet had
missed the spine by two inches and any vital organs by a half inch. It
had lodged in the thick loin, and nature had built a healing scab of
tissue around it.
Ted probed it out with his knife and almost dropped the missile. In his
hand lay one of Carl Thornton's distinctive, unmistakable, hand-loaded
bullets.