78 CHAPTER XL 



say, "Whistle again," when his remark, "They're off," brought my 

 eyes back again to the deer. They were up and moving away. The 

 whistle had reached them, but apparently by a slower route than I 

 had anticipated. 



I was a little flurried by the incident, I will admit, and my stag 

 moving straight away from me on ground which gave me no chance 

 to shoot him in the back had no tendency to calm my nerves. The 

 result was that when he turned to the right very slightly so that a" 

 section perhaps three inches wide of his shoulder might have been 

 said to be visible beyond his flank, I attempted to put a bullet in that 

 section. 



But as I pulled I knew I had favored the left a little too much. My 

 fear was, of course, that I should shoot to the right and thus hit 

 the deer in the ham. The mistake I actually made was the reverse 

 of this. I wabbled at the moment of firing to the left until the bullet 

 must have sped harmlessly by the very nose of my intended victim. 



Near the crest of a hill my deer was out of sight in a twinkling 

 before I could finish saying to Danny, "I missed him to the left!" 

 Danny, good kind soul that he was, used a great deal more emphasis 

 than I would have thought of applying under the same circumstances 

 to assure me how hard it was for a man to shoot in such light and 

 when as "cauld" as I was, at a moving deer, plastered with mud that 

 made him look just like the mud itself, which was all very well, as an 

 evidence of the fine quality of Danny's sportsmanship, but there was 

 no palliation possible in my case. I just missed and that was all 

 there was to it. 



But I did not feel very badly over it. 1 had killed five stags without 

 a miss. They told me my score of deer per shot was far above the 

 average. I was having one of the most enjoyable experiences of my 

 life, the rare combination of hard mountain climbing with enough 

 spice from the pursuit of game to make it piquant, which appealed 

 to me beyond any form of sport I had previously indulged in, and a 

 miss or two or even more could not make me down hearted. I was 

 only sorry that Danny should be compelled to apologize for me. He 

 had made such a magnificent stalk under circumstances so difficult 

 that it really seemed ungrateful of me to fail in my shot. 



