Still, confident in my muscles—like steel yet from a thirty-five-hundred-mile walk across the continent—I had no apprehensions. The only thing necessary was to take him home in such fashion that he could not hurt me; and once there, the chain would take care of him.
So I got my left arm locked in a chancery hold around his neck, my right hand still firmly holding his right horn, which worked uncomfortably close to my stomach, and thus, lifting him so that his fore feet were off the ground, I started homeward.
But there had been a reckoning without the host. The first two blocks went fairly, though in an unceasing violent struggle—rather to the scandal of the two or three passers we met, so early for Sunday morning in that quiet part of the town. But when I came with my prisoner to Fifth Street, it was with the consciousness that I was pretty well worn out, and that he, in spite of the strangle-lock, seemed to be growing fresher.
Each moment he fought with new rage and vigor, sometimes driving me against the fence, sometimes over the curb; lunging fiercely with those sinewy hind-legs, and striking wildly with the pointed fore-hoofs, whose dangerous effectiveness every hunter knows.
The way we wrestled and fought over the next six or seven hundred feet might have been amusing to bystanders, but became terrible to me. It was not for the bruises and gashes I got, nor for the breathless thumps against fences and trees, nor for the being violently thrown several times. I kept his head in chancery, and these small hurts were not much more than one expects to get in a good bout of catch-as-can with a human adversary.
As long as I could keep that deadlock on his neck I was perfectly safe from any serious injury, but the grim certainty confronted me that I could not keep it much longer. My arm began to give at his fiercest lunges, my breath and heart were alike stampeding, and I felt creeping over me the dizzy faintness of utter exhaustion. Never had wrestler given me such tussle before—though I have worked two hours “on the carpet” at a bout.
Down we went again at the last corner, and again a glancing hoof cut me as I fought back to my feet. I dropped the horn and clasped the left wrist with my right hand, drawing the arm tighter under the brute’s throat, at once to hold him surer and cut off his wind. But the broad leather collar seemed to save him. A burly fellow passed. “Help me with this deer!” I panted; but he looked at the savage struggles of Bonito and hurried on.
At the very gate the beast bore me down once more; but once more I struggled up and dragged him in. We swayed and fought along, tearing up the gravel-walks and flower-beds, and at last came to the shed. I could barely stand, and Bonito dragged me hither and yon. My eyes were hazy, and the cramped arms began to slip. Would Virginia never come? I yelled again, and just then she came running out.
“Fasten—his chains—around the post!” I had just breath to gasp; and, like the brave girl she was, she did it—in what seemed to me forever, while the deer and I fought the last bout.