They waited and they waited, a big man crouched like a tiger below, and a highly excited small boy above, while the deer did every exasperating thing that animals could do.
They started straight for the rock, grazing along, and then for no reason in the world beat back on their tracks, or turned to right or left. They even went so far as to lie down, chewing most contentedly.
One hour went by—two—when suddenly the buck rose and walked straight up the cañon in a course that would take him within twenty feet of the rock. Jim heard him snort and prepared for action, laying hold of a corner of stone to get a spring from all-fours.
The deer’s shadow floated black on the grass before him, and Jim leaped—to the biggest surprise of his life, for instead of making the least effort to escape, the buck charged, and that with such sudden fury it was all the man could do to lay hold of him anywhere as they came to dirt together.
The next ten seconds was delirium, each combatant doing something as quick as he could without any definite aim. Jim received a painful rake across the chest from the antlers, and a jab in the leg from the sharp hoofs, while the deer was the worse for several bangs over the head and an ear nearly pulled off, as they rolled over together.
It came over Jim with the force of a revelation that he had got into a very different business from that which he had intended. Instead of the “timid deer” whose capture was the difficulty, he found himself engaged with a horned and hoofed demon, and the problem was how to get away.
Meanwhile, Ches had legged it down the hill-side at his best speed, enthusiastically cheering what he supposed was a prearranged performance. Jim had promised him fun, and that whirling heap below supplied plenty of it.
“Hooray!” yelled Ches. “Hooray! Hold him dere, Jim, till I get down!”
Jim heard the shrill voice, as he succeeded, after a desperate effort, in getting an arm around the deer’s neck, so that he could do something in the choking line, and he smiled grimly in the heat of battle. “All right, Ches!” he gasped. “Don’t—hurry!”
“Keep out of this!” he yelled a moment later as Ches burst out from the bushes. “You’ll get killed!”