Presently, above the scrape of my snowshoes, I heard the deer coming, cr-r-runch! cr-r-runch! the heavy plunges growing shorter and fainter, while behind the sounds an eager, whining trail-cry grew into a fierce howl of canine exultation. Something was telling me to hurry, hurry; that the big buck I had so often hunted was in my power at last, and that, if I would square accounts, I must beat the dogs, though they were nearer to him now than I. The excitement of a new kind of hunt, a hunt to save, not to kill, was tingling all over me when I circled a dense thicket of firs with a rush, and there he lay, up to his shoulders in the snow before me.
He had taken his last jump. The splendid strength which had carried him so far was spent now to the last ounce. He lay resting easily in the snow, his head outstretched on the crust before him, awaiting the tragedy that had followed him for years, by lake and clearing and winter yard, and that burst out behind him now with a cry to make one's nerves shudder. The glory of his antlers was gone; he had dropped them months before; but the mighty shoulders and sinewy neck and perfect head showed how well, how grandly he had deserved my hunting.
He threw up his head as I burst out upon him from an utterly unexpected quarter--the very thing that I had so often tried to do, in vain, in the old glorious days. "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? Well, here am I." That is what his eyes, great, sad, accusing eyes, were saying as he laid his head down on the snow again, quiet as an Indian at the torture, too proud to struggle where nothing was to be gained but pity or derision.
A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the woods. Wolves cease their cry in the last swift burst of speed that will bring the game in sight. Then the dogs broke out of the cover behind him with a fiercer howl that was too much for even his nerves to stand. Nothing on earth could have met such a death unmoved. No ears, however trained, could hear that fierce cry for blood without turning to meet it face to face. With a mighty effort the buck. whirled in the snow and gathered himself for the tragedy.
Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog that, with no nose of his own for hunting, had followed the pirate leader for mere love of killing. As he jumped for the throat, the buck, with his last strength, reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore feet clear of the snow, and plunged down again with a hard, swift sabre-cut of his right hoof. It caught the dog on the neck as he rose on the spring, and ripped him from ear to tail. Deer and dog came down together. Then the buck rose swiftly for his last blow, and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like lightning; one straight, hard drive with the crushing force of a ten-ton hammer behind it--and his first enemy was out of the hunt forever. Before he had time to gather himself again the big yellow brindle, with the hound's blood showing in nose and ears,--Old Wally's dog,--leaped into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to a fierce growl as he sprang for the buck's nose.
I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and jumped to meet it. The club came down between the two heads; and there was no reserve this time in the muscles that swung it. It caught the brute fair on the head, where the nose begins to come up into the skull,--and he too had harried his last deer.
