AND OTHER HUNTING ADVENTURES. 291 



led to the southwest. A number of fallen trees, 

 lying across these, gave me frequent opportunities 

 to mount their prostrate trunks and look over large 

 tracts of surrounding country. In thus sauntering 

 and looking I had spent an hour or more when, 

 on passing an unusually dense clump of tall dry weeds 

 that stood near the road, I was startled by a sudden 

 crashing and rattling among them, and an instant 

 later two large does broke cover at the farther side 

 and started across a narrow open space. But before 

 they readied the farther side of it the voice of my 

 Winchester express was reverberating among the 

 lofty pines, and a cloud of smoke hung between me 

 and where I had last seen them. I sprang to one side 

 to avoid this, but they had both disappeared in the 

 thicket, and I could still hear one of them crash- 

 ing away toward the green woods. I felt sure that 

 I had hit the other, and, going to where I had last 

 seen her, I found blood, hair, and several small bits 

 of flesh on the ground and the neighboring weeds. 

 Following the trail a distance of fifty feet, I found 

 her lying dead with her throat cut, and, in fact, a 

 considerable portion of it shot away. The express 

 bullet, driven by a heavy charge of powder, has 

 such a high velocity that when it strikes flesh it 

 invariably makes a big hole in it. One hind leg was 

 also broken squarely off at the knee and the bone 

 protruded through the skin. 



I stood pondering and puzzling over this strange 

 phenomenon. How in the name of wonder could 

 one bullet break her hind leg and cut her throat? 

 I stooped down and examined the wound. To my 

 surprise, I found that it had not been made with a 



