The Whitetail Deer. 45 



drive one of the bottoms for whitetail. The cowboy and 

 our one trackhound plunged into the young cottonwood, 

 which grew thickly over the sandy bottom ; while the 

 little hunter and I took our stands on a cut bank, 

 twenty feet high and half a mile long, which hedged 

 in the trees from behind. Three or four game trails 

 led up through steep, narrow clefts in this bank ; and 

 we tried to watch these. Soon I saw a deer in an open- 

 ing below, headed towards one end of the bank, round 

 which another game trail led ; and I ran hard towards this 

 end, where it turned into a knife-like ridge of clay. About 

 fifty yards from the point there must have been some 

 slight irregularities in the face of the bank, enough to give 

 the deer a foothold ; for as I ran along the animal sud- 

 denly bounced over the crest, so close that I could have 

 hit it with my right hand. As I tried to pull up short and 

 swing round, my feet slipped from under me in the wet 

 clay, and down I went ; while the deer literally turned a 

 terrified somersault backwards. I flung myself to the 

 edge and missed a hurried shot as it raced back on its 

 tracks. Then, wheeling, I saw the little hunter running 

 towards me along the top of the cut bank, his face on a 

 broad grin. He leaped over one of the narrow clefts, up 

 which a game trail led ; and hardly was he across before 

 the frightened deer bolted up it, not three yards from his 

 back. He did not turn, in spite of my shouting and 

 handwaving, and the frightened deer, in the last stage of 

 panic at finding itself again almost touching one of its 

 foes, sped off across the grassy slopes like a quarter horse. 

 When at last the hunter did turn, it was too late ; and our 



