268 SPORTING ADVENTURES 



to their heedlessness to all things but the feast they were 

 enjoying so we nelvaneed towards them as stealthily as possible, 

 and got to within fifty yards of them before we were detected. 



They showed little fear of us, however, for they did not 

 attempt to eseape, and, as we intended to make hay while the 

 sun shone, we opened a rapid fire on them, and kept it up for 

 several seconds. When we ceased the majority of the pack 

 were gone, but they left five of their comrades dead and 

 wounded behind them. Two were killed outright, and the 

 other three were so badly crippled that they could not escape, 

 and these we soon finished with our revolvers. They made 

 no effort to show fight, and we could have kicked them with- 

 out apparently, eliciting any more display of feeling from them 

 than a howl of pain. 



Having had a most unexpected and unusual, if not extra- 

 ordinary morning's sport, we decided to place all our game 

 together in a secure cache, and to take home only one buck 

 for fresh meat. It took us four hours of hard walking and 

 steady toil to accomplish this, and when we finished we were 

 as weary a pair of hunters as the country could produce that 

 day. When we returned to camp we found its faithful 

 guardian dozing near the fire, and received from him a joyous 

 greeting. 



While my comrade attended to the preparations for supper 

 I went for water to the rivulet, and there I found a splendid 

 yearling doe lying dead, her throat being cut open and torn 

 from the jowl to near the chest. I supposed at first it svas 

 the work of a cougar, but on tilting up the legs I saw the 

 blood run out, and knowing the habit that animal has of 

 drinking up the life fluid before it touches anything else, and 

 then dragging the body away to a place of concealment, I 

 concluded I had guessed wrongly that time; yet I knew it 

 could not have been wolves that had killed her, or they would 

 have eaten her in the twinkling of an eye. I was sorely 

 puzzled to account for her death, and when I returned to camp 

 I told my companion of the fact. " It must be Dick's work," 

 said he, "and if it is we'll soon know it." Calling the dog, 

 we returned to the rivulet, and when we approached it that 



