While he still rode in the shadow of the eastern hills, the sun from behind them struck the face of the western range ten miles or more across Fire Valley. Behind that again it glinted on peaks still capped with the snows of the previous winter. The sunshine moved downward to the valley and eastward across it in a marching swath of gold. In that clear, thin air to the keen eyes of the boy, peaks and rocks and even trees miles away were sharply defined. Below him was a lake, pale silver where the mists that still clung to its surface had parted. Half an hour later it would take on the wondrous blue of mountain waters. But the boy did not care for that, nor just then for the great unfolding panorama of rolling, timber-clad hills, bare, gray peaks and blue sky. He was an hour late and, as everybody knows, the early morning is the best time to hunt.
He had intended to enter a pass leading into the hills and turn from it up a big draw which he knew held blacktail, but he gave up the idea and turned along the base of the mountain. He was now in a country of jackpine with huge, scattered, gloomy firs and chumps of cottonwood. Numerous little spring-fed creeks ran through it, and there were rocky coulees and small ponds. It was an ideal country for whitetail. There the boy dismounted, hung his saddle from a tree out of the reach of a possible porcupine, and put his pony on a rope. He glanced around mechanically, noting the exact position and registering landmarks. Then he levered a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle, dropped the hammer to half cock, tucked the weapon under his arm and struck off parallel with the base of the mountain.
In motion the impression of awkwardness vanished. He walked with the peculiar straight-footed, bent-kneed slouch which is the distinctive mark of the woodsman and moccasin wearer; and is, moreover, extremely easy because the weight of the body cushions on the natural shock-absorbers, the ball of the foot and the bend of the knee, and so is quite a different method of locomotion from the ordinary heel-jarring stride. Also it is much faster than it looks. And so the boy moved easily and silently, his moccasined feet automatically avoiding sticks and loose stones.
He did not hurry. Now and then he stopped, his eyes keen as a young hawk's fixed on some ill-defined object, and he remained absolutely motionless until it defined itself to his gaze. Occasionally he inspected the soft ground, but though he saw many impressions of the hoofs of deer he paid little attention to them. He followed the only practical method of still-hunting, prowling along quietly and watchfully.
But luck seemed against him. Twice, in spite of his care, he heard the thumping beat which told that deer, alarmed, were making a get-away, but he did not see them. Being pardonably proud of his eyes and his ability to move quietly, the boy was disgusted. Noon came and he had no meat. He sat down by a spring which gushed cold from the base of a hill, and ate his bread and meat and two doughnuts. Of the latter four remained. These he saved against an emergency, and stretching himself on a patch of yellow, sun-dried grass went to sleep like a young dog.
In an hour he awoke, stretched himself, drank from the spring and circling toward the mountain began to work back toward his pony. He had covered perhaps half the return distance when he came suddenly upon a young buck. At the same time the buck caught sight of him and set sail for the protection of thick brush.
Though taken by surprise, the boy was unflurried. He planted his feet solidly, swung his rifle swiftly but without hurry, caught the leaping form fair with the bead and squeezed the trigger. A second time the rifle rapped on the heels of its own echo, and the buck pitched forward sprawling, the stiffening gone from his slim limbs which kicked convulsively.
But instead of running forward eagerly, the boy scarcely shifted his position as he pumped another cartridge into place. As the deer did not rise he fed two fresh shells to the magazine methodically. There was no youthful triumph in his face. Instead it showed a certain dissatisfaction.
"Ought to have downed him first shot," he muttered, and went forward. He turned the deer over finding that the first bullet had stuck too far back. Laying the rifle aside he stuck the animal and proceeded to dress him. Completing his task he rose and scanned the brush thirty yards away for a convenient sapling on which to hang his meat.
As he looked, his eye was arrested by a movement in the bushes of something dun or brown. Without taking his eyes from the spot he stooped for his rifle, cocked it and advanced slowly.