H FOLLOWING 
THE DEER 
126 
WINTER TRAILS 
was luck, — luck to find my quarry 
so early on the first day out, and bet- 
ter luck that, during my long" absence, 
the cunning animal had kept himself 
and his consorts clear of Old Wally 
and his devices. 
When I ran to examine the back 
trail more carefully, I found that the 
deer had passed the night in a dense 
thicket of evergreen, on a hilltop over- 
looking the unused road. They had 
come down the hill in the early morn- 
ing, picking their way among the 
stumps of a burned clearing, stepping 
carefully in each other's tracks so as 
to make but a single trail. At the 
road they had leaped clear across from 
one thicket to another, leaving never 
