“I’ve seen him,” said Vane, “drop a deer going almost as fast as a locomotive through thick brush, with a single-shot rifle, and I believe he once assisted in killing a panther in a thicket you couldn’t see two yards ahead in. The point is, that he meant to eat the deer, and the panther had been taking a rancher’s hogs.”
“Then I’m sorry I brought him,” said Mabel decidedly. “He’s not a sportsman.”
“I really think there’s some excuse for the more vigorous sports,” Evelyn declared. “Of course, you can’t eliminate a certain amount of cruelty; but admitting that, isn’t it just as well that men who live in a luxurious civilisation should be willing to plod through miles of heather after grouse, risk their limbs on horseback, or spend hours in cold water? These are bracing things; they imply moral discipline. It can’t be nice to ride at a dangerous fence, or flounder down a rapid after an otter when you’re stiff with cold. The effort to do so must be wholesome.”
“A sure thing,” Carroll agreed. “The only drawback is that when you’ve got your fox or otter, it isn’t worth anything. A good many of the folks in the newer lands have to make something of the kind of effort you described every day. In their case, the results are waggon-trails, valleys cleared for orchards, new branch railroads. I suppose it’s a matter of opinion, but if I’d put in a season’s risky work I’d sooner have a piece of land to grow fruit on, or a share in a mineral claim—you get plenty of excitement in prospecting—than a fox’s tail. But there are people in Canada who wouldn’t agree with me.”
He strolled along the water’s edge with Evelyn, and presently looked round.
“Mopsy’s gone, and I don’t see Vane,” he said.
“After all, he’s one of us. If you’re born in the North Country, it’s hard to keep out of the river when you hear the otter hounds.”
They took up their station behind a growth of alders, and for a while the dogs went trotting by in twos and threes or swam about the pool, but nothing else broke the surface of the leaden-coloured water. Then there was a cry, an outbreak of shouting, a confused baying, and half a dozen hounds dashed past. Evelyn stretched out her hand.
“Look!” she said.
Carroll saw a small grey spot—the top of the otter’s head—moving across the slacker part of the pool, with a very slight, wedge-shaped ripple trailing away from it. It sank next moment; a bubble or two rose, and then there was nothing but the smooth flow of water.