Dan and Lennox started together up the long slope of the ridge. Dan alone was armed; Lennox went with him solely as a guide. The deer season had just opened, and it might be that Dan would want to procure one of these creatures.
"But I'm not sure I want to hunt deer," Dan told him. "You speak of them as being so beautiful—"
"They are beautiful, and your grandfather would never hunt them either, except for meat. But maybe you'll change your mind when you see a buck. Besides, we might run into a lynx or a panther. But not very likely, without dogs."
They trudged up, over the carpet of pine needles. They fought their way through a thicket of buckbrush. Once they saw the gray squirrels in the tree tops. And before Lennox had as much as supposed they were near the haunts of big game, a yearling doe sprang up from its bed in the thickets.
For an instant she stood motionless, presenting a perfect target. It was evident that she had heard the sound of the approaching hunters, but had not as yet located or identified them with her near-sighted eyes. Lennox whirled to find Dan standing very still, peering along the barrel of his rifle. But he didn't shoot. A light danced in his eyes, and his fingers crooked nervously about the trigger, but yet there was no pressure. The deer, seeing Lennox move, leaped into her terror-pace,—that astounding run that is one of the fastest gaits in the whole animal world. In the wink of an eye, she was out of sight.
"Why didn't you shoot?" Lennox demanded.
"Shoot? It was a doe, wasn't it?"
"Good Lord, of course it was a doe! But there are no game laws that go back this far. Besides—you aimed at it."
"I aimed just to see if I could catch it through my sights. And I could. My glasses sort of made it blur—but I think—perhaps—that I could have shot it. But I'm not going to kill does. There must be some reason for the game laws, or they wouldn't exist."
"You're a funny one. Come three thousand miles to hunt and then pass up the first deer you see. You could almost have been your grandfather, to have done that. He thought killing a deer needlessly was almost as bad as killing a man. They are beautiful things, aren't they?"