ANOTHER KIND OF OPEN GROUND. 201 



You wait a few seconds and they seem a few min- 

 utes; a few minutes and they seem long hours. 

 Surely he has slipped away unseen, you think; that 

 rock would give a so much better view; he may be 

 getting away; no time is to be lost. So Haste reasons 

 with you; and though Patience commands you in 

 thunder-tones to keep still, you will listen to Haste. 

 You put your foot upon the rock and are just raising 

 yourself upon it, when a sudden crash of brush comes 

 from near the place where you last saw the bit of 

 brown. It is followed at once by the well-known 

 bump, bump, bump, and from the bottom of the ravine 

 away goes the buck bouncing on steely legs up the 

 opposite side. He looks now as large as a yearling 

 calf, as with high bounding springs he surges above 

 the brush, with the morning sun glinting on every 

 tine and shining from nearly every hair. Little he 

 cares for the rapid fire of your repeater. He surges 

 away as if it were only play, leaving your bullets all 

 above him as he goes curving downward from the 

 climax of his lofty bound. 



He reaches the top of the ridge, stops, wheels half 

 around, and turns his great mulish ears and dark blue 

 eyes full upon you. There again is your artist-deer 

 at last, standing full broadside, bulging with fatness, 

 looming now as large and lustrous as he was before 

 small and dim, as graceful and majestic as he was be- 

 fore ugly and insignificant and only fifty yards away! 



Aim at the very lowest point where the shoulder 

 joins the body; and take a fine sight at that or you 

 will still overshoot him. A tremor runs through all 

 your nerves; the front sight of the rifle wavers all 

 over the target; with a convulsive jerk you pull the 

 trigger. The rifle cracks, and as the smoke clears 



