He was close to the foot of the hill when the three breathless fellows above saw him raise his rifle, just as the unfortunate little caribou, after many efforts to escape, had been beaten to its knees.
“He’ll drop one, sure! He’s a crack shot—is Cyrus! There! he’s drawing bead. Bravo!... he’s floored the biggest!”
Herb’s gusty breath blew the sentences through his nostrils, while the sudden, explosive bang of the Winchester cut through all other sounds, and set the air a-quiver.
Twice Cyrus fired.
The largest bull-caribou leaped three feet upward, wheeled about, staggered to his knees. A third shot stopped his bullying forever.
“Hurrah! I guess you’ve got the leader—the best of the herd. That other bull was a buster too! You might ha’ dropped him, if you’d been in the humor!” bellowed the guide, springing to his legs, and letting out his pent-up wind in a full-blast roar of triumph.
He well knew that Cyrus, “being a queer specimen sportsman,” and the right sort after all, would be satisfied with the one inevitable deed of death.
As their leader fell, the caribou raised their heads, stared in stiffened wonder for a few seconds, offering a steady mark for the smoking rifle if it had been in the grasp of a butcher. Then, as though propelled by one shock, they cut for the wood at dazzling speed.
A minute—and they were in the distance as tufts of hair blown before a storm-wind.
The half-killed weakling sought shelter more slowly in another direction.