SPORT AND TRAVEL 235 



instantly ducked down and crawled through the 

 snow to a fallen tree, and, looking over it, could see 

 a small piece of the rump of the beast we were fol- 

 lowing, and also a portion of its head, but every other 

 part of its body was completely hidden by the stems 

 of the pine-trees. Something had attracted the ani- 

 mal's attention, and it was evidently standing listen- 

 ing. I did not care to fire an expanding bullet into 

 its rump, and so crept out sideways along the trunk 

 of a fallen tree, to try to get a view of its shoulder. 

 But when I looked up again the stag was gone. Its 

 delicate sense of hearing or sight or smell had given 

 it warning of its enemies' near neighbourhood, and 

 again it had struggled onwards, in a last desperate 

 effort to shake off its pursuers. I never heard a 

 sound, but the first few plunges of the startled brute 

 were prodigious. He always went upwards, and 

 Graham foretold that if he did not play out before he 

 reached it, he would get to the top of the mountain, 

 as he said it was much easier for a heavy animal with 

 a broken fore leg to go uphill in a series of bounds, 

 always taken from the hind-quarters, than to go down- 

 hill when all his weight would come on the one 

 sound fore leg. As we ascended we went slower and 

 slower, and took it in turns to " break trail," for we 

 now sank over our knees at every step in the snow. 

 For a long time I cherished the hope that the dis- 

 abled wapiti would not be able to reach the top of 

 the mountain; but after a time I began to think that 



