The Flying Boys to the Rescue

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

“This must be the fellow; I don’t suppose he would mind such a weapon as my revolver, even if it wasn’t against the law to shoot his kind at this season, but Til give him a good scare for making me think he was Bunk.”

With which the youth flung up his arms, uttered a loud “Whoof!” and bounded through the undergrowth toward the buck. Instead of making off in a panic, the animal looked for a moment at the approaching form, and then lowering his head charged straight at it.

This was turning the tables with a vengeance. Harvey Hamilton had set out to hunt a magnificent buck only to awake suddenly to the fact that the buck was hunting him.

“Jingo! I didn’t expect that!” exclaimed our young friend, whirling round and dashing off at headlong speed.

“I wonder if he can climb a tree,” was the next thought of the panic-stricken youth, who, without drawing the small weapon, which would have been practically useless, glanced hurriedly around for a refuge. He had precious little time to spare, for the brute was crashing down upon him like a runaway locomotive on a down grade.

A few paces away the fugitive thought he saw what he longed for, in the shape of a limb as thick as his arm, which put out at right angles from a trunk eight or ten feet above the ground. He could leap upward, catch hold and swing himself above the branch, but while running with might and main it suddenly occurred to him that the support was too low, and the towering antlers would overtake him before he could scramble out of their reach.

He heard the superb terror so close on his heels that, after running a few paces farther, he glanced over his shoulder to learn how many more seconds he had to live. As he did so, his foot caught in a wirelike vine which wound along the ground and he sprawled forward on his hands and knees.

Harvey not only fell but kept on falling. He had struck the edge of a ravine down which he shot so abruptly that he was gone beyond the power of checking himself, before he knew what was happening. He felt he was sinking and flung out his hands in a desperate effort to save himself, though he might well have questioned whether he was not fortunate after all in the promised escape from his infuriated pursuer. He gripped bush after bush, but in every instance it was uprooted and remained in his hands or gave way to others which he seized and which in their turn yielded to the strain. Then came the terrifying thought that the buck would tumble down upon him and crush out the breath of life.

Harvey was absolutely helpless. He might have been badly hurt by his fall had not his attempts to stop his descent so broken its force that when he suddenly landed on his feet he was only slightly jarred. In the same moment that this occurred, he plunged to one side so as to be out of the way of the avalanche which he expected from above.

But the buck was wiser in his way than the young aviator. Stillness followed the involuntary descent of the latter, and then the animal was heard threshing through the undergrowth. Whatever intentions he had held regarding the lad were given up and he went off.