118 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
she could spring over, when the cats had to work 
under, and she increased her lead. Once below 
the laurel, into the more open woods, she rapidly 
left the four pursuers behind. 
Lucy was the last to give up the chase, but 
finally she turned back, too, when the terrified 
deer broke out of the woods into an open field 
behind a house, and made her way back up the 
mountain, busily looking: for mouse tracks in the 
light snow as she went. If one couldn’t have a 
deer, a mouse would do! Lucy was nothing if 
not philosophical. 
But, as it turned out, there was a greater 
tragedy lurking in this exploit than the mere loss 
of a venison supper. The craftiest hunter and 
trapper in all that section of the country had been 
hidden in a leaf blind beside a deer trail at the 
base of the upper ledges, thinking that the deer 
frightened by the hunters in the swamps below 
would be coming up this way. Two or three had 
passed him, but he was waiting for a fat buck, and 
didn’t shoot. He had heard the racket, then the 
little doe came plunging over the ledges, and had 
seen her go by, just out of gunshot, with the four 
