70 CHAPTER X. 



John and I spied upon the herd, soon discovered moving further 

 and further away from us, but neither his long telescope nor my 

 good field glasses could find the hit stag in the lot. 



We decided to work back along the mountainside in the hope of 

 locating by blind luck the place where it seemed possible the stag 

 might have lain down. Hunting for the proverbial needle in the hay 

 stack would be an easy task compared to that which John and I had 

 set for ourselves in trying to locate the wounded animal. 



Not only was there available some square miles of broken ground 

 offering much cover for this evasive beast to lie in, but fold after 

 fold of the hill slope was invisible from the one on either side as 

 this mountain did not go down in one straight line, but in suc- 

 cessive folds. 



We came at length to what seemed the end of all our resources, and 

 stopped to talk it over. It did not seem possible the deer could be 

 ahead of us. He might be anywhere behind us, down or up, the 

 hillside. We might, I reasoned, have passed within fifty feet of him 

 in the condition I imagined he then was, and he would be very apt 

 to simply lie closer and pay no attention to us. 



In search of a clue which might guide us, I requested John to 

 point out the place where he had last seen the stag. He did so and 

 I identified almost exactly the same spot. I reasoned from this 

 that the stag might have turned back along the hillside instead of 

 going further away from us. With this idea in mind, I told John 

 that we would go on for another two hundred yards or so to the 

 next shoulder which came down at right angles, and if we did not 

 then see a sign of our quarry, we would give him up. 



While I was talking to the stalker, I was filling my pipe. I stopped 

 after he had begun the forward movement, to light it. I looked up 

 from this important occupation, upon a startled exclamation from 

 John, to see beyond him, not over fifty feet in his front, our wounded 

 stag making his way rapidly down the hill to our left front, his right 

 foreleg showing plainly broken and useless. 



John had the rifle; the rifle was in the leather scabbard and instead 

 of rushing to me and at the same time drawing the weapon from 

 its covering, John stood in apparent stupefaction and looked. I had 

 to run to him, take the case from his hand and then drag the rifle 



