CHAPTER IX.
STEP HEN'S GREAT LUCK.
"Snakes! well, Step Hen, you're away off, if you think they're everfound out, with the weather as biting as it is right now!" laughed Thad;who sized up the situation instantly, and knew full well there wasnothing of the sort the matter with his hunting companion.
"Well, anyway, _something_ gave me a bite, and you can see theblood on my hand right now, Thad," whined Step Hen, crawling once moreinto view, and looking as though he could not be convinced to thecontrary of his statement, just because of a little frost.
He held up his left hand as he spoke. Thad took hold of it, and withthose keen eyes of his, managed to grapple with the facts immediately.
"You only managed to strike up against a sliver of wood, and got asplinter in your hand," he declared; "see here, I can show you," sayingwhich he used the nails of his finger and thumb for a forceps, and drewout a little splinter that had pushed under the skin, just far enough tobring a drop or two of blood, and give Step Hen a sharp pain.
"Oh! thank you, Thad!" exclaimed the other, as though vastly relieved."You see, I just detest all kinds of crawlers the worst kind; and thattalk about rattlers, and the bounty paid for their tails, must have beenhanging on my mind. When I felt that sudden sharp jab, of course thefirst thing that flashed into my brain was that I'd tumbled on the nestof a rattlesnake, and he took me for one of the bounty jumpers. But onlya sliver of wood--huh, I can stand that easy enough."
"Suck it good and plenty," advised the far seeing Thad. "I always do assoon as I get a cut of any kind, and especially if it's a splinter.Sometimes it keeps you from getting poison in your system, that makes abad sore."
Step Hen obediently did as he was told. At least he had implicitconfidence in the patrol leader, and was ready to follow his adviceunder the slightest provocation. That was a feather in the cap of ThadBrewster, in that he possessed the full confidence of his comrades. Theybelieved in him, and were never in a state of mutiny concerning theorders he gave, as leader of the Silver Fox Patrol.
Once more the two boys tramped on. Thad thought it might be as well toimpart a little useful information concerning the dormant condition ofall snakes during winter time; and how many a bunch of the wrigglers hehad found, while the cold season was on, looking as though they werefrozen stiff.
This information he imparted in almost a whisper as they moved along.When out looking for deer, a muffler on speech is of paramountimportance; and knowing all about this, Thad soon relapsed into silence.
"Tell you more some other time, Step Hen," he remarked as a wind-up;"that is, if you care to hear more about snakes. No matter how youdislike the breed, you really ought to know more than you seem to, abouttheir habits. It might be the means of saving you from trouble some fineday, when, by accident, you happen to run across some reptile in thewoods. And now we'll forget all that. I'm not going to say another word,unless I have to."
They kept pushing on; and Step Hen began to believe they must be manymiles from their starting point; at any rate he began to feel a littleheavy-footed, though too proud to mention the fact to Thad. Besides,Step Hen had walked pretty good distances before, and believed that hemust soon get what he called his "second wind." After that he would begood for hours, he fancied.
It must have been well on to eleven o'clock when Thad felt his companionnudge him in the back. As he turned to look, Step Hen made a suggestivegesture with his head, and pointed upwards.
There was a dead gray sky above them, and already a few scattered flakesof snow, really the first of the season, were drifting downward, lookinglike tiny feathers plucked from the downy breast of a snow goose.
Thad simply nodded his head to indicate that he too had observed them;and at the same time he shook his finger toward Step Hen, afraid lestthe other might be itching to start a conversation. In fact, this wasjust what the other scout was hoping to do. This grim silence had begunto work upon his nerves--just walking on and on, with not a blessed signof the fine buck they expected to get, commenced to pall upon Step Hen,in whom the instincts of a hunter had never been born; although of latehe had begun to develop a taste for roaming the woods with a gun overhis shoulder. But he had much to learn concerning the secrets thatNature hides from most eyes, but which are as the page of an open bookto the favored few.
Step Hen began to twist his head around frequently. At first Thadthought he was developing a new eagerness to discover signs of game; butthen he soon saw that the wistful expression on the other's face wasbrought about by quite a different cause.
To tell the honest truth about it, Step Hen was trying to figure out inhis benighted brain just what the cardinal points of the compass mightbe. It was not that he possessed any alarming interest in provingcertain facts Thad and Allan had explained, concerning the fascinatinggame of learning where the north lay by marks on the trees; the generaldirection in which they slanted; signs of moss on the north or northwestside of the tree, and various other well proven methods of locatingone's self. Oh! nothing of the kind. Step Hen wanted to find out oneparticular fact. They had started _north_ when leaving camp; andnow, if he could only learn that they were heading due south, it wouldtell him that Thad had swung around, and was facing back home again; andthus he would not be under the painful necessity of informing hiscompanion that he was tired of the useless hunt, when nothing worthwhile showed up.
And then it happened!
Step Hen happened to have his eyes in the right quarter when suddenly afine big buck sprang to its feet, and stared at them a second or two,before starting to spring away. They had been heading up into the windall the time, which was a part of Thad's principle as a true stillhunter; and the deer had not known of their presence until the greenhornhappened to step on a small branch, which snapped under his weight.
Possibly Step Hen never really knew just how he did it. Indeed, heafterwards confessed to himself that his ready little rifle just seemedto swing upward to his shoulder by some instinct, which was probably theexact truth; for hunters seldom have time to do any thinking.
He saw that splendid deer standing there before him. Now, Step Hen hadoften fired a target rifle at just such a picture of a deer as this inthe shooting gallery in Cranford. And when he took a hasty aim justbehind the shoulder of the startled buck, he was really following outhis usual custom of covering the bull's-eye on the artificial deer, sofamiliar to his boyish eyes.
Bang! went the rifle, as he pressed the trigger.
Thad had his double-barreled gun in readiness, and could havesupplemented the shot of Step Hen by pouring in a broadside of smallbullets that must have dropped the animal in his tracks. But herefrained, for his instinct seemed to tell him that the missile fromStep Hen's little rifle had struck home, as the buck gave a convulsiveleap, and pitched over; and Thad knew how much a new beginner in thegame delights in the knowledge that he has accomplished the work ofbringing down a deer unassisted.
True, the buck managed to scramble to its feet again, and run; but eventhen the patrol leader held his fire, for he knew that the animal couldnot go more than a hundred or two feet before it must drop.
"I rung the bell then, Thad; didn't you hear me?" almost shrieked StepHen, so excited that he never once thought of pumping the explodedcartridge from the firing chamber of his repeating rifle, and sending afresh one in after it; and then, as the stricken buck scrambled to hisfeet again, and went off at a wobbling gait the astonished and dismayedStep Hen, who should have been prepared to send in another shot on hisown account, actually forgot that he held a rifle calculated to repeat,and wildly besought his chum to fire.
"Oh! there he's going to get away after all, Thad!" he cried, jumping upand down in his excitement; "why don't you blaze away, and knock my buckover? Thad, oh, do let him have it good and hard! There, now he's gone,and we've lost him! It's a shame, that's what it is, when I so nearlygot him. And he had six prongs too! Oh, me! oh, my! what tough luck!"
"Don't worry, Step Hen," said Thad, quickly; "th
at deer can't get away.You shot him to pieces, and he's just bound to drop before five minutes.We'll just follow him up, and find him lying as dead as----"
Just what Thad had in mind as a comparison Step Hen never knew. Perhapshe was going to say "as dead as a door nail," that being a favoriteexpression among the scouts; or it might be Thad meant to take a littleflight into ancient history, and compare the condition of that buckinside of five minutes with the Julius Caesar of olden Roman times. Itdid not matter.
He was interrupted by a sudden loud explosion. The sound came from thequarter in which the buck had just gone, and could not have been fardistant. And even the tenderfoot understood what it meant.
"Oh! listen to that, would you, Thad?" he burst forth with. "There'ssomebody else hunting up in this neck of the woods, and they've got myfine buck! Now, ain't that the worst thing ever; and just when it beganto look as if he ought to belong to me, too; for you said he was hardhit; and I just know I rung the bell with that bullet. And now I reckonit's all off. Oh! why _didn't_ you knock him over when you had thechance, Thad?"
"I sure would if I'd had the least suspicion that there was any otherhunter around these diggings," declared Thad, with a frown on hisusually smooth brow; for he instantly began to scent trouble. "But comeon, let's start along, and see what it all means. Perhaps now old Eli,or Jim may have wandered out to take a little side hunt."
"But anyway, it's _my_ buck, Thad; you said I got him!" grumbledStep Hen, as he started after his leader.
They had no trouble in following in the direction taken by the strickendeer; even Step Hen, upon having his attention directed to the ground byThad, could readily discern the trail of blood spots that told how thebuck had been badly hurt by the shot back of the shoulder.
And less than three minutes later the two scouts came upon a scene thatcaused Thad to frown; while Step Hen's mouth opened with surprise, evenas his eyes were unduly dilated in his intense excitement.