CHAPTER XVI
FRANK KILLS A DEER
They plodded through the bush for an hour or two without seeing anyliving 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 nothinggrows," he observed. "The deer get up on to those places out of the dewthen. 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 nothave been sorry to head for home, for his duck trousers were badly tornand one of his boots which had been rather the worse for wear when hestarted was almost dropping off his foot. They trudged on, however, andaccident favored them, as it often does when one is hunting, for at lastwhen they were in very thick bush Harry dropped suddenly behind a patchof withered fern.
"Look there!" he said softly. "Right ahead of you yonder."
Frank gazed ahead with straining eyes, but he could only see the greattrunks stretching back in serried ranks. He had heard somewhat to hisastonishment that it is not often that a novice can see a deer in thebush even when it is pointed out to him, but now, it seemed, the thingwas true. He could have declared that there was not a deer anywherewithin the range of his vision.
"Right in front," whispered Harry, impatiently. "About seventy yardsoff. Oh, look yonder!"
He stretched his hand out and at last Frank noticed what seemed to be avery slightly different colored strip of something behind a narrowopening in a thicket. It might have been withering fern, or a cluster offading leaves, but he would never have imagined it to be a portion of adeer. 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 itscarcely seemed probable that the deer would wait until he wascomfortably ready. He lined the sights on a twig immediately in front ofthe object, and though his hands had quivered he found them growingsteadier as he squeezed the trigger. He heard no report, but there was acrash in the thicket as the smoke came drifting back, and Harry ranforward with a shout.
"Come on!" he cried. "You've hit it!"
Frank ran his fastest, though running of any kind was extraordinarilydifficult. In places the withered fern was higher than his head andthere seemed to be innumerable bushes in his way, while when heendeavored to avoid them he generally came upon a giant tree which hadto be scrambled around. Still, there was no doubt that the deer was notfar 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 andthere 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 sawthe deer, which by the decreasing sound seemed to be drawing away fromthem, and Frank felt that it would be impossible for him to keep up thepace many minutes longer. He was breathless, and dripping withperspiration, and his clothes were torn all over. Indeed, eager as hewas, it was almost a relief when the sound in front of him graduallydied 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, buthe silently watched Harry, who began to walk up and down, lookingcarefully about him.
"It went through this bush," he said at length. "After that it must havecrossed 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 splasheson the leaves. Now and then they lost them for a little while and theundergrowth did not seem to have been disturbed, but on each occasionHarry contrived to find the spots again. He traced them from place toplace, moving more slowly and cautiously, while Frank painfully brokethrough the thickets in his wake. They were both nearly exhausted whenan 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 thatdeer's 'most as played out as we are."
This seemed very probable to Frank as he glanced at the broad red smearupon the damp soil, and for the first time he was troubled by a sense ofcompunction as he realized that there were two sides to hunting. Thepursuers' labor was severe enough, but he could imagine what the flightmust have cost the sorely wounded creature who had so far managed tokeep in front of them. He was scratched and torn and exhausted, but atleast he was sound in limb, while the deer must have staggered on inanguished terror with its life steadily draining from the cruel bullethole. Somewhere in his mind there was now a wish that he had not made sogood 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 followit, anyway. I remember when I got my first deer. Dad was with me, andbefore I fired he asked if I thought I could hit it where I wanted. Isaid I did, and he told me to make sure, because if the beast got awaywith a bullet in it I'd have to trail it until it dropped." He stoppedwith a significant laugh. "As it happened, we followed it close on threehours, through the thickest kind of bush, and--I wasn't so big then--itwas mighty hard work to get back to the ranch afterward."
Frank fancied that in the present case he might drop before the deerdid, though he realized that Mr. Oliver's rule was in one way a mercifulone and undoubtedly calculated to encourage careful shooting. When hehad recovered his breath a little they started again, but it was half anhour later when they caught a glimpse of the deer painfully laboringthrough a clump of fern on the slope of a steep rise. Harry pitched uphis rifle, and though the animal disappeared again immediately afterthey fired, they knew it was still going on by the snapping of twigs andthe rustling in the fern.
Harry was sure that he had hit it, and making a last effort, they brokeinto a run which Frank remembered for a considerable time afterward. Theslope seemed to be getting remarkably steep, he could scarcely see adozen yards in front of him through the undergrowth, and several timeshe stuck fast for a moment or two in tangled thickets. Then he fell intoa horrible tangle of rotting branches, dropping his rifle and bruisinghimself cruelly, and he only succeeded in forcing himself along becausehis 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 openview for a moment. The bush was thinner there, with less growth betweenthe trees, and he saw the animal limp out from a thicket, dragging aninjured limb. He flung up his rifle, and Harry who was a little in frontfired almost as he did. The deer staggered, made a feeble bound, andvanished as if the earth had opened under it. A moment or two laterHarry stopped with a hoarse, gasping shout.
Frank stumbled forward and found him standing on the brink of whatseemed to be a very deep ravine, the almost precipitous sides of whichwere shrouded in young firs and densely growing bushes. Harry was gazingdubiously 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 goinghome and telling dad we left it. Besides, it's quite likely he mightsend us back for it."
"Then if it has to be done, we may as well get about it," said Frankwearily.
Slinging his rifle, he crawled over the edge and went sliding andslipping down for about a dozen yards until he fell into the branches ofa young fir. After that he plunged into several bushes before he couldstop again, and eventually lowered himself foot by foot, clutching atwhatever seemed strong enough to hold him, until he alighted knee-deepin a splashing creek. Nearby the deer lay motionless where it had fallenupon the stones. It was a beautifully symmetrical creature, but itseemed 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 importantquestion is how we're going to get it home."
"Pack it," answered Harry. "But I'd better open it up first. You can sitdown while I do it, if you'd rather."
Frank would very much have preferred to sit down out of sight while thedeer was dressed, but it occurred to him that it would scarcely befitting 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'llhave to learn."
The operations that followed were singularly unpleasant, and Frank felta good deal less enthusiastic about hunting when he washed his hands andthe 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 myopinion 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 themeanwhile Harry got the deer, which he had not yet skinned, upon hisshoulders with its fore legs pulled over in front of him, and theystarted back for the ranch. It was, however, some time before they couldfind a way out of the gulch, and then they only gained the summit by anarduous scramble. After that they found themselves in exceedingly thickbush, with nothing that Frank could see to guide them. There wasprobably not much light at any time down among those great trunks whosebranches met and crossed high overhead, and what there was seemed to begetting dim.
"If we keep on going down we'll strike something by and by," urgedHarry. "The slope's naturally toward the beach."
The first thing they struck was a remarkably steep hillside, up whichthey struggled, Frank now carrying the deer, which he found heavy enoughbefore 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 twoponds in the bottom of it, and he gazed at them thoughtfully.
"We might get a duck," he mused. "They ought to be coming down fromAlaska now. It's freezing up there."
They floundered down the declivity, and, though Frank would havepreferred to push on straight for home, Harry insisted on creepingthrough the long harsh grass about the edge of the water. They tried oneof the ponds with no result, but at last Harry dropped suddenly behind atall clump of grass.
"Look!" he said. "There are two or three ducks yonder. You take thenearest. Keep the foresight as fine as you can."
Frank saw one or two small objects floating just outside the grassacross the pond. They seemed to be a very long way off, and though hefeared that he could not keep the sights upon any of them standing, theground looked horribly quaggy to kneel in. This could not be helped,however, for it seemed that getting wet and torn did not count when onewas hunting, and he pressed his right knee down into the mire. He couldjust see one of the ducks when he closed his left eye, and he hadmisgivings as to the result when he squeezed the trigger. Harry's rifleflashed immediately after his, there was a rattle of wings and astartled quacking, and he saw two ducks with long necks stretched outfly off above the trees. Another seemed to be lying on the water, andremembering the size of the bullet, he had no fear of that one gettingaway.
"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 thepond, into which they had to wade nearly waist-deep before Harrycontrived 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 decidedthat 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 wehave to do is to make a bee-line home. We'll come along again in a weekor two. The ponds are full of ducks for a little in the spring andfall."
"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 tothe tundra marshes by the Polar Sea in spring. In the fall they comeback again, how far I don't know--lower California, Mexico, perhaps,right away to Bolivia and Peru. Going and coming, the big flocks stoparound here to rest a while." He smiled at his companion. "A mallardduck'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 thembefore they reached the ranch, utterly worn out, with most of theirgarments rent to tatters; and Frank, who had carried the deer the lastmile or two, gave a gasp of relief when he laid it down.