"What are we going to do about it now?" Frank asked.
"Trail that deer," was the breathless answer. "It's not going very far. You can tell by the noise it made that it was hit too bad to jump."
Frank was of the opinion that it had gone quite far enough already, but he silently watched Harry, who began to walk up and down, looking carefully about him.
"It went through this bush," he said at length. "After that it must have crossed the fern yonder." Then scrambling forward he waved his hand. "Come on! The trail's quite plain."
Frank followed him with some trouble and once more saw the red splashes on the leaves. Now and then they lost them for a little while and the undergrowth did not seem to have been disturbed, but on each occasion Harry contrived to find the spots again. He traced them from place to place, moving more slowly and cautiously, while Frank painfully broke through the thickets in his wake. They were both nearly exhausted when an hour after the shot was fired they came to a little creek.
"It lay down here," said Harry. "We'll stop a minute or two. Guess that deer's 'most as played out as we are."
This seemed very probable to Frank as he glanced at the broad red smear upon the damp soil, and for the first time he was troubled by a sense of compunction as he realized that there were two sides to hunting. The pursuers' labor was severe enough, but he could imagine what the flight must have cost the sorely wounded creature who had so far managed to keep in front of them. He was scratched and torn and exhausted, but at least he was sound in limb, while the deer must have staggered on in anguished terror with its life steadily draining from the cruel bullet hole. Somewhere in his mind there was now a wish that he had not made so good a shot.
"Do you think we're far behind it?" he asked.
"I don't, but that doesn't count," answered Harry. "We have to follow it, anyway. I remember when I got my first deer. Dad was with me, and before I fired he asked if I thought I could hit it where I wanted. I said I did, and he told me to make sure, because if the beast got away with a bullet in it I'd have to trail it until it dropped." He stopped with a significant laugh. "As it happened, we followed it close on three hours, through the thickest kind of bush, and—I wasn't so big then—it was mighty hard work to get back to the ranch afterward."
Frank fancied that in the present case he might drop before the deer did, though he realized that Mr. Oliver's rule was in one way a merciful one and undoubtedly calculated to encourage careful shooting. When he had recovered his breath a little they started again, but it was half an hour later when they caught a glimpse of the deer painfully laboring through a clump of fern on the slope of a steep rise. Harry pitched up his rifle, and though the animal disappeared again immediately after they fired, they knew it was still going on by the snapping of twigs and the rustling in the fern.