ELUSIVE, STAGS. 31 



I suffered in this climb, but old ways and the training of years 

 began to assert themselves, and though my muscles stiffened until they 

 cracked every time I paused for a moment, I felt a reserve behind 

 which I knew would help me to the top. 



And to the top I went, from which, in a lull of the storm, looking 

 down we saw, or rather Donald saw first and pointed out to me, the 

 deer we were pursuing. I remember just how they sprang into the 

 object glass as I searched for them in the lower ground. 



I picked up, as I swung the glass slowly over the field, white rocks, 

 gray and black rocks, brown heather and green, red brown grass near 

 peat hags, and at last as if they had sprung at me, three stags not 

 over a thousand yards away, where they stood surrounded by twenty 

 or thirty hinds. Fine fellows they were, too, much larger than I 

 expected to see. Noble, antlered heads and strong, clean-cut bodies 

 above shapely legs. 



For the first time, impelled thereto by the labor I had performed I 

 commenced to feel rising within me a desire to kill one of those stags, 

 and I said to myself, "If I ever get close enough to one of you fellows 

 the only reason I shall not kill you will be because I can't shoot well 

 enough to hit you!" 



Retiring from the lookout place until a break in the spur hid us, we 

 commenced a downward movement, still on the dangerous rock face. 

 From the moment we began the descending stalk we were out of sight 

 of the deer and would continue so until working up a ravine which lay 

 at the foot of the range, we should, if all went well, come close enough 

 for a shot. 



But all did not go well. The wind whipped and whirled about, 

 blowing first from this way and that. I saw Donald shaking his head 

 and I guessed that he feared the deer would catch our wind. It was 

 so, because after infinite labor when we at last reached the point 

 from which a shot might be possible we saw nothing in the place where 

 the deer had stood at our last look. And only after some minutes of 

 searching with the glasses was I able to pick them out, a mile and 

 more beyond. 



After a long, long look through his glass, Donald, saying not one 

 word, commenced to move upward again, now in a third and new place. 

 We had lunched at two o'clock; it was late afternoon now and 



