94 GUN, ROD, AND SADDLE. 



move. So I practiced in this instance; carefully for 

 ten or fifteen minutes I watched that he did not 

 leave the cover; then having concluded that he had 

 lain down, I quietly lit my pipe and dawdled away 

 an hour more. Deeming that I had granted suf- 

 ficient law, I renewed operations and pushed 

 forward ; the track was A^ery 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 scuffed the surface of the 

 snow Avith his toes. An old deer-stalker will know 

 these symptoms, a young one may without harm 

 remember them. Having cautiously followed 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 handkerchief to it, and left this banner waving 

 to denote possession, also to furnish a hint to the 

 prairie wolves that they had better steer clear. That 



