184 



BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



of time. Yet apparently nothing had fallen, and there was a 

 painful dearth of evidence that anything had been hit. Tak- 

 ing first the tracks of the fawns, we found them leading away 

 in long jumps, tearing up the ground with every leg intact. 

 It seemed almost useless to go to look for the others; but we 

 went, more from sound principle than from hope. Within 

 ten yards of where we had fired at the first Deer, lay a three- 

 year-old buck, dead, shot through the shoulder. And now 

 the question arose, had we been shooting at only one during 

 the iirst part of the programme, or had there been two Deer ? 

 A little circling around revealed a track leading away in 

 full run, and following it about a hundred yards, we found 

 another three-year-old, dead, with two bullets in him. The 

 second had evidently risen almost into the place vacated by 

 the first one, and the first was the last one we found. 



