C. stiffen, then
crouch a little. He leaned forward--his eyes had the look of a falcon.
Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of
my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I looked--I strained
my eyes--I flashed them along the rim of the ravine where R.C. had been
gazing. A gray form seemed to move into the field of my vision. That
instant it leaped, and R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack.
I seemed stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
headlong and I heard a solid thump.
"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp. "Look for
another one."
No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the gray form had
plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It was far enough to make
me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a fine three-point buck that
had been shot square in the back of the head between and below the roots
of its antlers.
"Never knew what struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid hold of the
deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket. "Fine an' fat.
Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the horses an' the other
help me hang him up."
VI
I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught, and we had
parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading to his camp, and
I to linger a while longer up there in the Indian-summer woods, so full
of gold and silence and fragrance on that October afternoon.
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