The cliff where we had pitched our little camp overlooked the river, and about a hundred yards from the base of our cliff was a graveled ford, or shallows. The scrub growth was close down to the water's edge but stretching out into the stream was a little sandy beach. Beyond the scrub growth rose the dark pines, and an occasional oak with its great bare branches towered above all meaner trees. From the underbrush had stepped a young buck. He was picking his way daintily across the pebbles to the water's edge. How beautiful he was! I wanted our guests to have good sport, but I longed with a longing that was almost a prayer that no one with a gun was seeing what Uncle Peter and I were seeing. What wind there was came from his direction so he got no scent of us, and he drank his fill with unconcern, as though he lived in the "forest primeval." Then he proudly raised his antlered head and stood a moment sniffing the air.
"Bang!" rang out a shot, whizzing close to my ear, and "Bang!" came the echo from the cliff. The young buck stood a moment as though sculptured, and not until the echo answered did he drop. It almost seemed that the echo had been the good shot that had laid low this possible future leader of herds.
"Oh, the pity of it! The pity of it!" my heart cried out. Turning, I saw my friends on a ledge of rock farther down the river; Dum, with her smoking gun still raised to her shoulder, an exalted look on her face and her black hair with the coppery lights tumbling all about her, an Amazon, indeed; Dee, crumpled up in a little heap, her hands over her face.
"Hurrah!" shouted Reginald Kent, beside himself with excitement.
Dee jumped up from her crumpled heap and clambered down the cliff, tears streaming down her face and great sobs shaking her body. She fortunately had on waterproof boots, because she thought no more of water than she did of land. She splashed right across the shallow ford and, kneeling down by the poor deer, she buried her tear-stained face on his twitching shoulder.
Just then the skiff with Mr. Tucker, Father and Jo Winn came round a bend in the river.
"Hello! What's this?" called Mr. Tucker in some alarm, seeing his daughter kneeling on the sand by an expiring stag. "Where's Dum? What's happened?"
"It's just Dee, deedling," called out Dum. "I shot the deer and now Dee's breaking her heart."
"O—h, O—h, but he recognized me just before he died!" sobbed Dee. "I could tell by the way he looked at me."
"It was a good thing he did 'recognize' you," grinned Jo Winn. "If he had not, he might have gored you. An injured buck is a right dangerous thing to fool with."