"Well, I want that deer," said Colonel Keogh, enthusiastically. He rose from a stump on which he had been sitting for a few moments, with his rifle across his knees, and started quickly for a little patch of box-elder not a hundred yards distant.
"Hold on, Colonel!" said Joe, cautiously; "the deer isn't there now. Don't you see his hoof-marks point the other way? Look, here's where he's nibbled the grass," pointing with his rifle to a strip of bunch-grass in the opposite direction from the box-elders. "Let's go on, Colonel; deer don't stay long in one spot so early in the day, and if we don't get a move on us, it may be hours before we can get a shot at 'em."
They trudged on for about a mile and a half, walking side by side, the Colonel telling the boy some of his experiences in the war of the Rebellion. Suddenly Joe, touching the Colonel's shoulder, said, "Hark!" in a hoarse whisper, at the same instant elevating his head like a stag-hound that has just winded game. In another minute they heard a rustling as though something were stepping on dead leaves.
"There's a buck deer in there, and a big one, too," said Joe, in a whisper, as he pointed to a bunch of upland willows whose slender tops were oscillating slowly as if disturbed by a gentle breeze, though there was not a breath of wind blowing. "He's probably got a half dozen or more does around him, and if we are mighty careful, we may both get a shot."
The willow copse was on the top of a little knoll, and the ground was smooth on the side of it where the Colonel and Joe stood. Here and there at intervals were great trees, but without any underbrush to snap under their feet as they quietly trod over the soft, black soil.
At Joe's suggestion, he and the Colonel separated, widening the distance between them to about twenty paces, Colonel Keogh on the right of Joe. They crept on as silently as savages on the trail of an enemy, and soon arrived at the base of the elevation, which was only some fifty yards to its crest. There they noticed that the dark earth had been cut up in every direction by the sharp, delicate foot-marks of the creatures supposed to be in front of them. A significant glance rapidly passed from one to the other as they drew nearer their quarry.
At that juncture, just as they reached the edge of the copse, each masked himself behind a good-sized cottonwood, which seemed to have grown where it did for their especial use. The Colonel in his enthusiasm could not repress the remark in a whisper to Joe:—
"Look there, Joe. There's a dozen deer!"
Sure enough, right in front of them were a dozen fat does lying down ruminating their morning meal. The old buck, the guardian of the whole herd, was standing up as if watching over his charge, and stamping the ground with his sharp hoofs to drive off the buffalo gnats that swarmed thickly around him.
In another instant, at a signal previously agreed upon, a low whistle from the Colonel, the rifles of the hunters were discharged simultaneously, and all but two of the terribly frightened animals bounded off through the timber.