A SUCCESSFUL SHOT. 103 



So I practised in this instance ; carefully for ten or 

 fifteen minutes I watched that he did not leave the 

 cover ; then having concluded that he had laid down, 

 I quietly lit my pipe and dawdled away an hour more. 

 Deeming that I had granted sufficient law, I renewed 

 operations and pushed forward ; the track was very 

 irregular in length of pace from where he had re- 

 duced his gait to a walk, and several times from want 

 of lifting his feet high enough, he had ploughed the 

 surface of the snow with his toes. An old deer- 

 stalker will know these symptoms, a young one may 

 without harm remember them. Having cautiously 

 followed the trail three parts of the way across the 

 cover, and almost commenced to think I would have 

 done better by waiting half-an-hour longer, the buck 

 jumped up within twenty yards, heading straight 

 from me, when I gave him the contents a second 

 time of the right-hand barrel in the back of his 

 head. 



The distance was too great to remove him home 

 that day, so cutting a branch off a willow, I affixed 

 my handkerchief to it, and left this banner waving 

 to denote possession, also to furnish a hint to the 

 prairie wolves that they had better steer clear. That 

 night at the tavern bar in the most ostentatious 

 manner, in presence of the assembled crowd, I ordered 

 a team to be got ready in the morning to bring in the 

 big buck ; old leather- stocking, sotto voce, remarking 

 that I had not been reared on the right soil to be able 

 to come that game. However, next morning, when I 

 arrived with my trophy, the crowd congratulated me, 

 while leather-stocking remarked that he knew not 

 what the world was coming to, by G d, when a 



