122 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



half the trouble in his ultimate capture that you would 

 have by constantly keeping him on the move. So I prac- 

 ticed in this instance ; carefully for ten or fifteen minutes 

 I watched that he did not leave the cover ; then, having 

 concluded that he had laid down, I quietly lighted my pipe, 

 and dawdled away an hour more. Deeming that I had 

 granted sufficient law, I renewed operations and pushed 

 forward; the track was very irregular in length of pace 

 from where he had reduced his gait to a walk, and several 

 times, from want of lifting his feet high enough, he had 

 plowed the surface of the snow with his toes. An old 

 deer-stalker will know these symptoms ; a young one may 

 without harm remember them. Having cautiously fol- 

 lowed the trail three parts of the way across the cover, and 

 almost commenced to think I would have done better by 

 waiting half an hour longer, the buck jumped up within 

 twenty yards, heading straight from me, when I gave him 

 the contents a second time of the right-hand barrel in the 

 back of his head. 



The distance was too great to remove him home that 

 day, so, cutting a branch off a willow, I affixed my hand- 

 kerchief to it, and left this banner waving to denote pos- 

 session, also to furnish a hint to the prairie-wolves that they 

 had better steer clear. That night at the tavern bar, in 

 the most ostentatious manner, in presence of the assembled 

 crowd, I ordered a team to be got ready in the morning to 

 bring in the Big Buck ; old Leather-stocking, sotto voce, re- 

 marking that I had not been reared on the right soil to be 

 able to come that game. However, next morning, when I 

 arrived with my trophy, the crowd congratulated me, while 

 Leather-stocking remarked that he knew not what the world 

 was coming to, by G d, when a Britisher, with a bird-gun, 

 could kill the biggest buck in Illinois. In conclusion, I would 

 say that in skinning we found that at the first shot one grain 



