NEAR MIDDLE RIDGE. 137 



two antlers. On the other hand, it was just possible that 

 he had in two consecutive years knocked off the second horn 

 fighting or in running through the woods when it was in 

 velvet. We could talk with perfect safety in the wind that 

 was whistling off the frozen barrens. The grouild between 

 us and the stag was ideal for stalking covered with boulders 

 and hummocks of moss. The spot was obviously a favourite 

 feeding place of caribou, for the cream-coloured reindeer 

 moss was cropped as close as if it had been cut with a lawn- 

 mower. By using a little care we were able to get within 

 sixty yards of the big stag, and we waited watching him. 

 Presently he faced us, and neither with the naked eye nor 

 with the telescope could I make out any sign of the missing 

 horn. Unquestionably he was one-horned. 



After a while he got on his feet and began feeding straight 

 towards us, until at last I could see the colour of his eyes 

 and even, as I fancied, the ruminative expression in them. 

 At length he stopped feeding and raised his head. We 

 were directly below him and only some fifteen or twenty 

 paces away. He must, I imagine, have seen his companion 

 upon some neighbouring barren. This was the moment to 

 shoot, for in another he would pass over the brow of the rise, 

 but instead, finally making up my mind not to shoot, I took 

 up a small pebble and tossed it at him. It did not hit him, 

 but in that second he became another creature. His head 

 went up into the inimitable stately pose of a startled deer. 

 He stood thus for a moment, then the great one-horned stag 

 galloped ponderously over the hill. 



In the following year he had a third escape, for it hap- 

 pened that|the veteran Bob Saunders was guiding a sports- 

 man over the same country when they fell in with and 

 stalked an enormous one-horned stag. Saunders wanted 

 his sportsman to shoot it, as he suggested that it had only 

 recently dropped the second horn and, by following the 

 animal's tracks backwards, they might find it. The sports- 



