Project Gutenberg's The Trail of the Sandhill Stag, by Ernest Seton-Thompson
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Title: The Trail of the Sandhill Stag
Author: Ernest Seton-Thompson
Release Date: May 10, 2010 [EBook #32319]
Language: English
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[Illustration: The Trail of the Sandhill Stag]
[Illustration: "The Track of a Mother Blacktail was suddenly joined by
two Little Ones' Tracks."]
THE TRAIL OF THE SANDHILL STAG
AND 60 DRAWINGS
[Illustration]
BY
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
[Illustration]
Naturalist to the Government of Manitoba
Author of
Wild Animals I Have Known
Art Anatomy of Animals
Mammals of Manitoba
Birds of Manitoba
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons New York City A.D. 1914
[Illustration]
Copyright, 1899, by
Ernest Seton-Thompson
First
Impression
October
12
1899
Second
Impression
February
16
1900
Third
Impression
December
20
1900
Fourth
Impression
July
16
1901
Fifth
Impression
August
18
1902
Sixth
Impression
October
29
1904
Seventh
Impression
November
30
1908
Eighth
Impression
November
1
1910
Ninth
Impression
April
10
1913
Tenth
Impression
December
10
1913
THE SCRIBNER PRESS
This Book is dedicated to the Old-timers of the Big Plain of Manitoba.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
To the Reader:
These are the best days of my life.
These are my golden days.
In this Book the designs for title-page, cover, and
general make-up, and also the literary revision, were
done by Mrs. Grace Gallatin Thompson Seton.
[Illustration]
List of full-page Drawings
[Illustration]
"The Track of a Mother Blacktail
was suddenly joined by two Little
Ones' Tracks" frontispiece
The Trail Spring page 14
"Wingless Birds" 22
"Sat down in the Moonlit Snow" 37
"Seven Deer, ... their Leader a wonderful
Buck" 56
"The Doe was walking slowly" 63
"Scanned the White World for his foe" 80
The Stag 89
[Illustration: The Trail Spring.]
I
It was a burning hot day. Yan was wandering in pursuit of birds among
the endless groves and glades of the Sandhill wilderness about
Carberry. The water in the numerous marshy ponds was warm with the sun
heat, so Yan cut across to the trail spring, the only place in the
country where he might find a cooling drink. As he stooped beside it
his eye fell on a small hoof-mark in the mud, a sharp and elegant
track.
[Illustration]
He had never seen one like it before, but it gave him a thrill, for he
knew at once it was the track of a _wild deer_.
"There are no deer in those hills now," the settlers told Yan. Yet
when the first snow came that autumn he, remembering the hoof-mark in
the mud, quietly took down his rifle and said to himself, "I am going
into the hills every day till I bring out a deer." Yan was a tall, raw
lad in the last of his teens. He was no hunter yet, but he was a
tireless runner, and filled with unflagging zeal. Away to the hills he
went on his quest day after day, and many a score of long white miles
he coursed, and night after night he returned to the shanty without
seeing even a track. But the longest chase will end. On a far, hard
trip in the southern hills he came at last on the trail of a deer--dim
and stale, but still a deer-trail--and again he felt a thrill as the
thought came, "At the other end of that line of dimples in the snow is
the creature that made them; each one is fresher than the last, and it
is only a question of time for me to come up with their maker."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
At first Yan could not tell by the dim track which way the animal had
gone. But he soon found that the mark was a little sharper at one end,
and rightly guessed that that was the toe; also he noticed that the
spaces shortened in going up hill, and at last a clear imprint in a
sandy place ended all doubt. Away he went with a new fire in his
blood, and an odd prickling in his hair; away on a long, hard follow
through interminable woods and hills, with the trail growing fresher
as he flew. All day he followed, and toward night it turned and led
him homeward. On it went, soon over familiar ground, back to the
sawmill, then over Mitchell's Plain, and at last into the thick poplar
woods near by, where Yan left it when it was too dark to follow. He
was only seven miles from home, and this he easily trotted in an hour.
[Illustration]
In the morning he was back to take it up, but instead of an old
track, there were now so many fresh ones, crossing and winding, that
he could not follow at all. So he prowled along haphazard, until he
found two tracks so new that he could easily trail them as before, and
he eagerly gave chase. As he sneaked along watching the tracks at his
feet instead of the woods ahead, he was startled by two big-eared,
grayish animals springing from a little glade into which he had
stumbled. They trotted to a bank fifty yards away and then turned to
gaze at him.
[Illustration]
How they did seem to _look_ with their great ears! How they spellbound
him by the soft gaze that he felt rather than saw! He knew what they
were. Had he not for weeks been holding ready, preparing and hungering
for this very sight! And yet how useless were his preparations; how
wholly all his preconcepts were swept away, and a wonder-stricken
"Oh-h-h!" went softly from his throat.
As he stood and gazed, they turned their heads away, though they still
seemed to look at him with their great ears, and trotting a few steps
to a smoother place, began to bound up and down in a sort of play.
They seemed to have forgotten him, and it was bewildering to see the
wonderful effortless way in which, by a tiny toe-touch, they would
rise six or eight feet in air. Yan stood fascinated by the strange
play of the light-limbed, gray-furred creatures. There was no haste or
alarm in their movements; he would watch them until they began to run
away--till they should take fright and begin the labored straining,
the vast athletic bounds, he had heard of. And it was only on noting
that they were rapidly fading into the distance that he realized that
_now_ they were running away, _already_ were flying for safety.
[Illustration: "Wingless Birds."]
Higher and higher they rose each time; gracefully their bodies swayed
inward as they curved along some bold ridge, or for a long space the
buff-white scutcheons that they bore behind them seemed hanging in
the air while these wingless birds were really sailing over some deep
gully.
Yan stood intensely gazing until they were out of sight, and it never
once occurred to him to shoot.
When they were gone he went to the place where they had begun their
play. Here was one track; where was the next? He looked all around and
was surprised to see a blank for fifteen feet; and then another blank,
and on farther, another: then the blanks increased to eighteen feet,
then to twenty, then to twenty-five and sometimes thirty feet. Each of
these playful, effortless bounds covered a space of eighteen to thirty
feet.
Gods above! They do not run at all, they fly; and once in a while come
down again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs.
* * * * *
"I'm glad they got away," said Yan. "They've shown me something to-day
that never man saw before. I know that no one else has ever seen it,
or he would have told of it."
[Illustration]
II
Yet when the morning came the old wolfish instinct was back in his
heart. "I must away to the hills," he said, "take up the trail, and be
a beast of the chase once more; my wits against their wits; my
strength against their strength; and against their speed, my gun."
[Illustration]
Oh! those glorious hills--an endless rolling stretch of sandy dunes,
with lakes and woods and grassy lawns between. Life--life on every
side, and life within, for Yan was young and strong and joyed in
powers complete. "These are the best days of my life," he said, "these
are my golden days." He thought it then, and oh, how well he came to
know it in the after years!
[Illustration]
All day at a long wolf-lope he would go and send the white hare and
the partridge flying from his path, and swing along and scan the
ground for sign and the telltale inscript in the snow, the oldest of
all writing, more thrillful of interest by far than the finest glyph
or scarab that ever Egypt gave to modern day.
But the driving snow was the wild deer's friend, as the driven snow
was his foe, and down it came that day and wiped out every trace.
[Illustration]
The next day and the next still found Yan careering in the hills, but
never a track or sign did he see. And the weeks went by, and many a
rolling mile he ran, and many a bitter day and freezing night he
passed in the snow-clad hills, sometimes on a deer-trail but more
often without; sometimes in the barren hills, and sometimes led by
woodmen's talk to far-off sheltering woods, and once or twice he saw
indeed the buff-white bannerets go floating up the hills. Sometimes
reports came of a great buck that frequented the timber-lands near the
sawmill, and more than once Yan found his trail, but never got a
glimpse of him; and the few deer there were now grew so wild with long
pursuit that he had no further chances to shoot, and the hunting
season passed in one long train of failures.
[Illustration]
Bright, unsad failures they. He seemed indeed to come back
empty-handed, but he really came home laden with the best spoils of
the chase, and he knew it more and more, as time went on, till every
day, at last, on the clear unending trail, was a glad triumphant
march.
III
[Illustration]
The year went by. Another season came, and Yan felt in his heart the
hunter fret once more. Even had he not, the talk he heard would have
set him all afire.
It told of a mighty buck that now lived in the hills--the Sandhill
Stag they called him. It told of his size, his speed, and the crowning
glory that he bore on his brow, a marvellous growth like sculptured
bronze with gleaming ivory points.
[Illustration]
So when the first tracking snow came, Yan set out with some comrades
who had caught a faint reflected glow of his ardor. They drove in a
sleigh to the Spruce Hill, then scattered to meet again at sunset. The
woods about abounded in hares and grouse, and the powder burned all
around. But no deer-track was to be found, so Yan quietly left the
woods and set off alone for Kennedy's Plain, where last this wonderful
buck had been seen.
[Illustration]
After a few miles he came on a great deer-track, so large and sharp
and broken by such mighty bounds that he knew it at once for the trail
of the Sandhill Stag.
[Illustration]
With a sudden rush of strength to his limbs he led away like a wolf on
the trail. And down his spine and in his hair he felt as before, and
yet as never before, the strange prickling that he knew was the same
as makes the wolf's mane bristle when he hunts. He followed till night
was near and he must needs turn, for the Spruce Hill was many miles
away.
He knew that it would be long after sunset before he could get there,
and he scarcely expected that his comrades would wait for him, but he
did not care; he gloried in the independence of his strength, for his
legs were like iron and his wind was like a hound's. Ten miles were
no more to him than a mile to another man, for he could run all day
and come home fresh, and always when alone in the lone hills he felt
within so glad a gush of wild exhilaration that his joy was full.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
So when his friends, feeling sure that he could take care of himself,
drove home and left him, he was glad to be left. They seemed rather to
pity him for imposing on himself such long, toilsome tramps. They had
no realization of what he found in those wind-swept hills. They never
once thought what they and all their friends and every man that ever
lived has striven for and offered his body, his brain, his freedom,
and his life to buy; what they were vainly wearing out their lives in
fearful, hopeless drudgery to gain, that boy was daily finding in
those hills. The bitter, biting, blizzard wind was without, but the
fire of health and youth was within; and at every stride in his daily
march, it was _happiness_ he found, and he knew it. And he smiled such
a gentle smile when he thought of those driven home in the sleigh
shivering and miserable, _yet pitying him_.
[Illustration]
Oh, what a glorious sunset he saw that day on Kennedy's Plain, with
the snow dyed red and the poplar woods aglow in pink and gold! What a
glorious tramp through the darkening woods as the shadows fell and
the yellow moon came up!
[Illustration]
"These are the best days of my life," he sang. "These are my golden
days!"
And as he neared the great Spruce Hill, Yan yelled a long hurrah! "In
case they are still there," he told himself, but really for very joy
of feeling all alive.
As he listened for the improbable response, he heard a faint howling
of wolves away over Kennedy's Plain. He mimicked their cry and quickly
got response, and noticed that they were gathering together, doubtless
hunting something, for now it was their hunting-cry. Nearer and nearer
it came, and his howls brought ready answers from the gloomy echoing
woods, when suddenly it flashed upon him: "It's _my_ trail you are on.
_You are hunting me._"
[Illustration: "Sat down in the Moonlit Snow."]
The road now led across a little open plain. It would have been
madness to climb a tree in such a fearful frost, so he went out to the
middle of the open place and sat down in the moonlit snow--a
glittering rifle in his hands, a row of shining brass pegs in his
belt, and a strange, new feeling in his heart. On came the chorus, a
deep, melodious howling, on to the very edge of the woods, and there
the note changed. Then there was silence. They must have seen him
sitting there, for the light was like day, but they went around in
the edge of the woods. A stick snapped to the right and a low '_Woof_'
came from the left. Then all was still. Yan felt them sneaking around,
felt them watching him from the cover, and strained his eyes in vain
to see some form that he might shoot. But they were wise, and he was
wise, for had he run he would soon have seen them closing in on him.
They must have been but few, for after their council of war they
decided he was better let alone, and he never saw them at all. For
twenty minutes he waited, but hearing no more of them, arose and went
homeward. And as he tramped he thought, "Now I know how a deer feels
when the grind of a moccasined foot or the click of a lock is heard
in the trail behind him."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
In the days that followed he learned those Sandhills well, for many a
frosty day and bitter night he spent in them. He learned to follow
fast the faintest trail of deer. He learned just why that trail went
never past a tamarack-tree, and why it pawed the snow at every oak,
and why the buck's is plainest and the fawn's down wind. He learned
just what the club-rush has to say, when its tussocks break the snow.
He came to know how the musk-rat lives beneath the ice, and why the
mink slides down a hill, and what the ice says when it screams at
night. The squirrels taught him how best a fir-cone can be stripped
and which of toadstools one might eat. The partridge, why it dives
beneath the snow, and the fox, just why he sets his feet so straight,
and why he wears so huge a tail.
[Illustration]
He learned the ponds, the woods, the hills, and a hundred secrets of
the trail, but--_he got no deer_.
And though many a score of crooked frosty miles he coursed, and
sometimes had a track to lead and sometimes none, he still went on,
like Galahad when the Grail was just before him. For more than once,
the guide that led was the trail of the Sandhill Stag.
IV
[Illustration]
The hunt was nearly over, for the season's end was nigh. The
moose-birds had picked the last of the saskatoons, all the
spruce-cones were scaled, and the hunger-moon was at hand. But a
hopeful chickadee sang '_See soon_' as Yan set off one frosty day for
the great Spruce Woods. On the road he overtook a woodcutter, who told
him that at such a place he had seen two deer last night, a doe and a
monstrous stag with "a rocking-chair on his head."
[Illustration]
Straight to the very place went Yan, and found the tracks--one like
those he had seen in the mud long ago, another a large unmistakable
print, the mark of the Sandhill Stag.
How the wild beast in his heart did ramp--he wanted to howl like a
wolf on a hot scent; and away they went through woods and hills, the
trail and Yan and the inner wolf.
[Illustration]
All day he followed and, grown crafty himself, remarked each sign, and
rejoiced to find that nowhere had the deer been bounding. And when the
sun was low the sign was warm, so laying aside unneeded things, Yan
crawled along like a snake on the track of a hare. All day the animals
had zigzagged as they fed; their drink was snow, and now at length
away across a lawn in a bank of brush Yan spied a _something_ flash. A
bird perhaps; he lay still and watched. Then gray among the gray
brush, he made out a great log, and from one end of it rose two
gnarled oaken boughs. Again the flash--the move of a restless ear,
then the oak boughs moved and Yan trembled, for he knew that the log
in the brush was the form of the Sandhill Stag. So grand, so charged
with _life_. He seemed a precious, sacred thing--a king, fur-robed and
duly crowned. To think of shooting now as he lay unconscious,
resting, seemed an awful crime. But Yan for weeks and months had pined
for this. His chance had come, and shoot he must. The long, long
strain grew tighter yet--grew taut--broke down, as up the rifle went.
But the wretched thing kept wabbling and pointing all about the little
glade. His breath came hot and fast and choking--so much, so very
much, so clearly all, hung on a single touch. He laid the rifle down,
revulsed--and trembled in the snow. But he soon regained the mastery,
his hand was steady now, the sights in line--'twas but a deer out
yonder. But at that moment the Stag turned full Yan's way, with those
regardful eyes and ears, and nostrils too, and gazed.
"Darest thou slay me?" said an uncrowned, unarmed king once, as his
eyes fell on the assassin's knife, and in that clear, calm gaze the
murderer quailed and cowed.
So trembled Yan; but he knew it was only stag-fever, and he despised
it then as he came in time to honor it; and the beast that dwelt
within him fired the gun.
The ball splashed short. The buck sprang up and the doe appeared.
Another shot; then, as they fled, another and another. But away the
deer went, lightly drifting across the low round hills.
V
[Illustration]
He followed their trail for some time, but gnashed his teeth to find
no sign of blood, and he burned with a raging animal sense that was
neither love nor hate. Within a mile there was a new sign that joined
on and filled him with another rage and shed light on many a bloody
page of frontier history--a moccasin-track, a straight-set,
broad-toed, moosehide track, the track of a Cree brave. He followed in
savage humor, and as he careered up a slope a tall form rose from a
log, raising one hand in peaceable gesture. Although Yan was behind,
the Indian had seen him first.
"Who are you?" said Yan, roughly.
"Chaska."
"What are you doing in my country?"
"It was my country first," he replied gravely.
"Those are my deer," Yan said, and thought.
"No man owns wild deer till he kills them," said Chaska.
"You better keep off any trail I'm following."
"Not afraid," said he, and made a gesture to include the whole
settlement, then added gently, "No good to fight; the best man will
get the most deer anyhow."
[Illustration]
And the end of it was that Yan stayed for several days with Chaska,
and got, not an antlered buck indeed, but, better far, an insight into
the ways of a man who could hunt. The Indian taught him _not_ to
follow the trail over the hills, for deer watch their back track, and
cross the hills to make this more easy. He taught him to tell by touch
and smell of sign just how far ahead they are, as well as the size and
condition of the deer, and not to trail closely when the game is near.
He taught him to study the wind by raising his moistened finger in the
air, and Yan thought, "Now I know why a deer's nose is always moist,
for he must always watch the wind." He showed Yan how much may be
gained at times by patient waiting, and that it is better to tread
like an Indian with foot set straight, for thereby one gains an inch
or two at each stride and can come back in one's own track through
deep snow. And he also unwittingly taught him that an Indian _cannot_
shoot with a rifle, and Natty Bumpo's adage came to mind, "A white man
can shoot with a gun, but it ain't accordin' to an Injun's gifts."
[Illustration]
Sometimes they went out together and sometimes singly. One day, while
out alone, Yan had followed a deer-track into a thicket by what is
now called Chaska Lake. The sign was fresh, and as he sneaked around
there was a rustle in the brush. Then he saw the kinnikinnick boughs
shaking. His gun flew up and covered the spot. As soon as he was sure
of the place he meant to fire. But when he saw the creature as a dusky
moving form through the twigs, he awaited a better view, which came,
and he had almost pulled the trigger when his hand was stayed by a
glimpse of red, and a moment later out stepped--Chaska.
"Chaska," Yan gasped, "I nearly did for you."
[Illustration]
For reply the Indian drew his finger across the red handkerchief on
his brow. Yan knew then one reason why a hunting Indian always wears
it; after that he wore one himself.
One day a flock of prairie-chickens flew high overhead toward the
thick Spruce Woods. Others followed, and it seemed to be a general
move. Chaska looked toward them and said, "Chickens go hide in bush.
Blizzard to-night."
It surely came, and the hunters stayed all day by the fire. Next day
it was as fierce as ever. On the third day it ceased somewhat, and
they hunted again. But Chaska returned with his gun broken by a fall,
and after a long silent smoke he said:
"Yan hunt in Moose Mountain?"
"No!"
"Good hunting. Go?"
Yan shook his head.
Presently the Indian, glancing to the eastward, said, "Sioux tracks
there to-day. All bad medicine here." And Yan knew that his mind was
made up. He went away and they never met again, and all that is left
of him now is his name, borne by the lonely lake that lies in the
Carberry Hills.
[Illustration]
VI
[Illustration]
"There are more deer round Carberry now than ever before, and the Big
Stag has been seen between Kennedy's Plain and the mill." So said a
note that reached Yan away in the East, where he had been chafing in a
new and distasteful life. It was the beginning of the hunting season,
the fret was already in his blood, and that letter decided him. For a
while the iron horse, for a while the gentle horse, then he donned his
moosehide wings and flew as of old on many a long, hard flight, to
return as so often before.
[Illustration]
Then he heard that at a certain lake far to the eastward seven deer
had been seen; their leader a wonderful buck.
[Illustration: "Seven Deer, ... their Leader a wonderful Buck."]
With three others he set out in a sleigh to the eastward lake, and
soon found the tracks--six of various sizes and one large one,
undoubtedly that of the famous Stag.
How utterly the veneer was torn to tatters by those seven chains of
tracks! How completely the wild paleolithic beast stood revealed in
each of the men, in spite of semi-modern garb, as they drove away on
the trail with a wild, excited gleam in every eye!
It was nearly night before the trail warmed up, but even then, in
spite of Yan's earnest protest, they drove on in the sleigh. And soon
they came to where the trail told of seven keen observers looking
backward from a hill, then an even sevenfold chain of twenty-five-foot
bounds. The hunters got no glimpse at all, but followed till the night
came down, then hastily camped in the snow.
In the morning they followed as before, and soon came to where seven
spots of black, bare ground showed where the deer had slept.
[Illustration]
Now when the trail grew warm Yan insisted on hunting on foot. He
trailed the deer into a great thicket, and knew just where they were
by a grouse that flew cackling from its farther side.
He arranged a plan, but his friends would not await the blue-jay's
'all-right' note, and the deer escaped. But finding themselves hard
pressed, they split their band, two going one way and five another.
Yan kept with him one, Duff, and leaving the others to follow the five
deer, he took up the twofold trail. Why? Because in it was the great
broad track he had followed for two years back.
On they went, overtaking the deer and causing them again to split. Yan
sent Duff after the doe, while he stuck relentlessly to the track of
the famous Stag. As the sun got low, the chase led to a great
half-wooded stretch, in a country new to him; for he had driven the
Stag far from his ancient range. The trail again grew hot, but just as
Yan felt sure he soon would close, two distant shots were heard, and
the track of the Stag as he found it then went off in a fear-winged
flight that might keep on for miles.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Yan went at a run, and soon found Duff. He had had two long shots at
the doe. The second he thought had hit her. Within half a mile they
found blood on the trail; within another half-mile the blood was no
more seen and the track seemed to have grown very large and strong.
The snow was drifting and the marks not easily read, yet Yan knew
very soon that the track they were on was not that of the wounded doe,
but was surely that of her antlered mate. Back on the trail they ran
till they solved the doubt, for there they learned that the Stag,
after making his own escape, had come back to change off: an old, old
trick of the hunted whereby one deer will cleverly join on and carry
on the line of tracks to save another that is too hard pressed, while
it leaps aside to hide or fly in a different direction. Thus the Stag
had sought to save his wounded mate, but the hunters remorselessly
took up her trail and gloated like wolves over the slight drip of
blood. Within another short run they found that the Stag, having
failed to divert the chase to himself, had returned to her, and at
sundown they sighted them a quarter of a mile ahead mounting a long
snow-slope. The doe was walking slowly, with hanging head and ears.
The buck was running about as though in trouble that he did not
understand, and coming back to caress the doe and wonder why she
walked so slowly. In another half-mile the hunters came up with them.
She was down in the snow. When he saw them coming, the great Stag
shook the oak-tree on his brow and circled about in doubt, then fled
from a foe he was powerless to resist.
[Illustration: "The Doe was walking slowly."]
[Illustration]
As the men came near the doe made a convulsive effort to rise, but
could not. Duff drew his knife. It never before occurred to Yan why he
and each of them carried a long knife. The poor doe turned on her foes
her great lustrous eyes; they were brimming with tears, but she made
no moan. Yan turned his back on the scene and covered his face with
his hands, but Duff went forward with the knife and did some dreadful,
unspeakable thing, Yan scarcely knew what, and when Duff called him he
slowly turned, and the big Stag's mate was lying quiet in the snow,
and the only living thing that they saw as they quit the scene was the
great round form bearing aloft the oak-tree on its brow as it haunted
the nearer hills.
And when, an hour later, the men came with the sleigh to lift the
doe's body from the crimsoned snow, there were large fresh tracks
about it, and a dark shadow passed over the whitened hill into the
silent night.
* * * * *
What morbid thoughts came from the fire that night! How the man in Yan
did taunt the glutted brute! Was this the end? Was this the real
chase? After long weeks, with the ideal alone in mind, after countless
blessed failures, was this the vile success--a beautiful, glorious,
living creature tortured into a loathsome mass of carrion?
[Illustration]
VII
But when the morning came the impress of the night was dim. A long
howl came over the hill, and the thought that a wolf was on the trail
that he was quitting smote sadly on Yan's heart. They all set out for
the settlement, but within an hour Yan only wanted an excuse to stay.
And when at length they ran onto the fresh track of the Sandhill Stag
himself, the lad was all ablaze once more.
"I cannot go back--something tells me that I must stay--I must see him
face to face again."
The rest had had enough of the bitter frost, so Yan took from the
sleigh a small pot, a blanket, and some food, and left them, to follow
alone the great sharp imprint in the snow.
"Good-by--good luck!"
[Illustration]
He watched the sleigh out of sight, in the low hills, and then felt as
he never had before. Though he had been so many months alone in the
wilds, he had never known loneliness, but as soon as his friends were
gone he was overwhelmed by a sense of the utter heart-sickening
dreariness of the endless, snowy waste. Where were the charms that he
had never failed to find until now? He wanted to recall the sleigh,
but pride kept him silent.
[Illustration]
In a little while it was too late, and soon he was once more in the
power of that fascinating, endless chain of tracks,--a chain begun
years ago, when in a June the track of a mother Blacktail was suddenly
joined by two little ones' tracks. Since then the three had gone on
winding over the land the trail-chains they were forging,--knotted and
kinked, and twisted with every move and thought of the makers,
imprinted with every hap of their lives, but interrupted never wholly.
At times the tracks were joined by that of some fierce foe and the
kind of mark was changed, but the chains went on for months and years,
now fast, now slow, but endless, until some foe more strong joined on
and there one trail was ended. But this great Stag was forging still
that mystic chain. A million roods of hills had he overlaid with its
links, had scribbled over in this oldest script with the story of his
life. If only our eyes were bright enough to follow up that twenty
thousand miles of trail, what light unguessed we might obtain where
the wisest now are groping!
[Illustration]
But skin deep, man is brute. Just a little while ago we were mere
hunting brutes--our bellies were our only thought, that telltale line
of dots was the road to food. No man can follow it far without
feeling a wild beast prickling in his hair and down his spine. Away
Yan went, a hunter-brute once more, all other feelings swamped.
[Illustration]
Late that day the trail, after many a kink and seeming break, led into
a great dense thicket of brittle, quaking asp. Yan knew that the Stag
was there to lie at rest. The deer went in up-wind, of course. His
eyes and ears would watch his trail, and his nose would guard in
front, so Yan went in at one side, trusting to get a shot. With a very
agony of care he made his way, step by step, and, after many minutes,
surely found the track, still leading on. Another lengthy crawl, with
nerves at tense, and then the lad thought he heard a twig snapped
behind him, though the track was still ahead. And after long he found
it true. Before lying down the Stag had doubled back, and while Yan
had thought him still ahead, he was lying far behind, so had gotten
wind of the man and now was miles away.
Once more into the unknown north away, till cold, black night came
down; then Yan sought out a sheltered spot and made a tiny, red-man's
fire. As Chaska had taught him long ago--'Big fire for fool.'
When the lad curled up to sleep he felt a vague wish to turn three
times like a dog, and a well-defined wish that he had fur on his face
and a bushy tail to lay around his freezing hands and feet, for it was
a night of northern frost. Old Peboan was stalking on the snow. The
stars seemed to crackle, so one could almost hear. The trees and earth
were bursting with the awful frost. The ice on a near lake was rent
all night by cracks that went whooping from shore to shore; and down
between the hills there poured the cold that burns.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A prairie-wolf came by in the night, but he did not howl or treat Yan
like an outsider now. He gave a gentle, doglike '_Woof, woof_,' a sort
of 'Oho! so you have come to it at last,' and passed away. Toward
morning the weather grew milder, but with the change there came a
driving snow. The track was blotted out. Yan had heeded nothing else,
and did not know where he was. After travelling an aimless mile or two
he decided to make for Pine Creek, which ought to lie southeastward.
But which way was southeast? The powdery snow was driven along through
the air, blinding, stinging, burning. On all things near it was like
smoke, and on farther things, a driving fog. But he made for a quaking
asp grove, and there, sticking through the snow, he found a crosier
golden-rod, dead and dry, but still faithfully delivering its
message, 'Yon is the north.' With course corrected, on he went, and,
whenever in doubt, dug out this compass-flower, till the country
dipped and Pine Creek lay below.
[Illustration]
There was good camping here, the very spot indeed where, fifteen years
before, Butler had camped on his Loneland Journey; but now the
blizzard had ceased, so Yan spent the day hunting without seeing a
track, and he spent the night as before, wishing that nature had been
kinder to him in the matter of fur. During that first lone night his
face and toes had been frozen and now bore burning sores. But still he
kept on the chase, for something within had told him that the Grail
was surely near. Next day a strange, unreasoning guess sent him east
across the creek in a deerless-looking barren land. Within half a mile
he came on dim tracks made lately in the storm. He followed, and soon
found where six deer had lain at rest, and among them a great, broad
bed and a giant track that only one could have made. The track was
almost fresh, the sign unfrozen still. "Within a mile," he thought.
But within a hundred yards there loomed up on a fog-wrapped hillside
five heads with ears regardant, and at that moment, too, there rose up
from the snowy top a great form like a blasted trunk with two dead
boughs still on. But they had seen him first, and before the deadly
gun could play, six beacons waved and a friendly hill had screened
them from its power.
[Illustration]
The Sandhill Stag had gathered his brood again, yet now that the
murderer was on the track once more, he scattered them as before. But
there was only one track for Yan.
At last the chase led away to the great dip of Pine Creek--a mile-wide
flat, with a long, dense thicket down the middle.
"There is where he is hiding and watching now, but there he will not
rest," said the something within, and Yan kept out of sight and
watched; after half an hour a dark spot left the willow belt and
wandered up the farther hill. When he was well out of sight over the
hill Yan ran across the valley and stalked around to get the trail on
the down-wind side. He found it, and there learned that the Stag was
as wise as he--he had climbed a good lookout and watched his back
trail, then seeing Yan crossing the flat, his track went swiftly
bounding, bounding--.
[Illustration: "Scanned the White World for his Foe."]
The Stag knew just how things stood; a single match to a finish now,
and he led away for a new region. But Yan was learning something he
had often heard--that the swiftest deer can be run down by a hardy
man; for he was as fresh as ever, but the great Stag's bounds were
shortening, he was surely tiring out, he must throw off the hunter
now, or he is lost.
He often mounted a high hill to scan the white world for his foe, and
the after-trail was a record of what he learned or feared. At last his
trail came to a sudden end. This was a mystery until long study showed
how he had returned backward on his own track for a hundred yards,
then bounded aside to fly in another direction. Three times he did
this, and then passed through an aspen thicket and, returning, lay
down in this thicket near his own track, so that in following, Yan
must pass where the Stag could smell and hear him long before the
trail brought the hunter over-close.
All these doublings and many more like them were patiently unravelled
and the shortening bounds were straightened out once more till, as
daylight waned, the tracks seemed to grow stale and the bounds again
grow long. After a little, Yan became wholly puzzled, so he stopped
right there and spent another wretched night. Next day at dawn he
worked it out.
He found he had been running the trail he had already run. With a long
hark-back, the doubt was cleared. The desperate Stag had joined onto
his old track and bounded aside at length to let the hunter follow the
cold scent. But the join-on was found and the real trail read, and
the tale that it told was of a great Stag wearing out, too tired to
eat, too scared to sleep, with a tireless hunter after.
[Illustration]
VIII
[Illustration]
A last long follow brought the hunt back to familiar ground--a
marsh-encompassed tract of woods with three ways in. There was the
deer's trail entering. Yan felt he would not come out there, for he
knew his foe was following. So swiftly and silently the hunter made
for the second road on the down-wind side, and having hung his coat
and sash there on a swaying sapling, he hastened to the third way
out, and hid. After a while, seeing nothing, Yan gave the low call
that the jaybird gives when there's danger abroad in the woods.
[Illustration]
All deer take guidance from the jay, and away off in the encompassed
woods Yan saw the great Stag with wavering ears go up a high lookout.
A low whistle turned him to a statue, but he was far away with many a
twig between. For some seconds he stood sniffing the wind and gazing
with his back to his foe, watching the back trail, where so long his
enemy had been, but never dreaming of that enemy in ambush ahead. Then
the breeze set the coat on the sapling a-fluttering. The Stag quickly
quit the hillock, not leaping or crashing through the brush,--he had
years ago got past that,--but silent and weasel-like threading the
maze, he disappeared. Yan crouched in the willow thicket and strained
his every sense and tried to train his ears for keener watching. A
twig ticked in the copse that he was in. Yan slowly rose with nerve
and sense at tightest tense, the gun in line--and as he rose, there
also rose, but fifteen feet away, a wondrous pair of bronze and ivory
horns, a royal head, a noble form behind it, and face to face they
stood, Yan and the Sandhill Stag. At last--at last, his life was in
Yan's hands. The Stag flinched not, but stood and gazed with those
great ears and mournful, truthful eyes, and the rifle leaped but sank
again, for the Stag stood still and calmly looked him in the eyes, and
Yan felt the prickling fading from his scalp, his clenched teeth
eased, his limbs, bent as to spring, relaxed and manlike stood erect.
'_Shoot, shoot, shoot now! This is what you have toiled for_,' said a
faint and fading voice, and spoke no more.
[Illustration]
But Yan remembered the night when he, himself run down, had turned to
face the hunting wolves, he remembered too that night when the snow
was red with crime, and now between him and the other there he dimly
saw a vision of an agonizing, dying doe, with great, sad eyes, that
only asked, 'What harm have I done you?' A change came over him, and
every thought of murder went from Yan as they gazed into each other's
eyes--and hearts. Yan could not look him in the eyes and take his
life, and different thoughts and a wholly different concept of the
Stag, coming--coming--long coming--had come.
* * * * *
"Oh, beautiful creature! One of our wise men has said, the body is the
soul made visible; is your spirit then so beautiful--as beautiful as
wise? We have long stood as foes, hunter and hunted, but now that
is changed and we stand face to face, fellow-creatures looking in each
other's eyes, not knowing each other's speech--but knowing motives and
feelings. Now I understand you as I never did before; surely you at
least in part understand me. For your life is at last in my power, yet
you have no fear. I knew of a deer once, that, run down by the hounds,
sought safety with the hunter, and he saved it--and you also I have
run down and you boldly seek safety with me. Yes! you are as wise as
you are beautiful, for I will never harm a hair of you. We are
brothers, oh, bounding Blacktail! only I am the elder and stronger,
and if only my strength could always be at hand to save you, you would
never come to harm. Go now, without fear, to range the piney hills;
never more shall I follow your trail with the wild wolf rampant in my
heart. Less and less as I grow do I see in your race mere flying
marks, or butcher-meat. We have grown, Little Brother, and learned
many things that you know not, but you have many a precious sense that
is wholly hidden from us. Go now without fear of me.
[Illustration]
"I may never see you again. But if only you would come sometimes and
look me in the eyes and make me feel as you have done to-day, you
would drive the wild beast wholly from my heart, and then the veil
would be a little drawn and I should know more of the things that wise
men have prayed for knowledge of. And yet I feel it never will be--I
have found the Grail. I have learned what Buddha learned. I shall
never see you again. Farewell."
[Illustration]
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