“I didn’t either,” said Joe, “but I thought he turned in an awkward kind of a way, as though he were hurt.”
“I have an idea I heard the ball strike,” said Hugh.
“Well,” said Jack, “let’s go up there anyhow. He was certainly a nice ram, and I’d like to get him.”
They hurried up the slope, Hugh and Joe ahead, while Jack toiled behind. Presently they heard a cheerful shout from Hugh, “Come on, son, there’s blood on the snow, and lots of it.”
“Jack did not raise his sights, but following Hugh’s suggestion fired at the animal’s neck.”—[Page 230]
Sure enough, when Jack got up to where the slope was less steep he could see, even at a distance, the pure white mantle of snow splashed with great dark blotches.
The trail seemed likely to be a plain one, and the men hurried along over the snow, up the hill. Presently they could see that the ram was staggering, for his tracks no longer went directly ahead, but wavered from side to side. Then they passed on to the rocks and could not see the trail so easily, but farther ahead came to another snow bank where there was a broad smear of blood, showing apparently that the animal had fallen on its side and slipped along over the snow.
Hugh and Joe ran round a point of dwarfed spruces, but Jack, in his eagerness to cut off a corner, attempted to go through the little trees, and found himself in drifted snow up to his waist and his legs held by the branches of the spruces. For a moment or two he could hear the clatter of the others running over the rocks, and a word or two of their talk, but by the time he had got out on to the rocks, his companions were far ahead of him. As they saw him coming, however, they sat down to wait for him.
He followed the blood trail, and when he came up he, too, sat down.