80 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



carefully out to the point. If you see nothing, retrace 

 your steps and take the next ridge the same way. 



Too much trouble for an uncertainty, do you think? 

 Then by all means have your own way and go straight 

 to the point. You may learn more in that way. But 

 you will yet see the day when you will take far more 

 trouble than that for an uncertainty. 



On you go to the first point, travel down that ridge 

 and across to the next one. Up that and down the 

 next one you think you will go, when suddenly you 

 find some more tracks of long plunging jumps. They 

 look so fresh that you had better follow them back 

 to where they came from. 



They lead you to the very point of the second ridge, 

 and there, in a bunch of thin brush, you find a fresh 

 warm bed about fifteen feet from where the occu- 

 pant's hoofs tore up the dirt at the first place he 

 struck the ground. Now stoop down in the bed until 

 your head is about eighteen inches from the ground. 

 Do you notice now how you can see over nearly the 

 whole of the low ground over which you passed in 

 coming to the other ridge? The deer might possibly 

 have heard you. But as he could have seen you, we 

 need not seek any other explanation. Now if you 

 had followed my advice, he could not have seen you 

 until you were quite close; you would have had the 

 same advantage of the wind, for it is blowing across 

 the ridges; you might have got a shot at him as he 

 was running away over the level ground; and if he 

 had run around either side of the ridge you would 

 probably have heard his hoofs, and by a quick dash to 

 that side of the ridge you might have got a shot at 

 him. At all events, you would at least have seen him, 



