He said, “By daylight I was where you came to grief by breaking through the ice, with this difference, that I was upon the other side of the creek, having crossed it higher up by means of a beaver dam. Being a cold trail, I pushed ahead sharply, keeping a good lookout, and in a little over two hours came to where the buck had lain down to pass the dark of the night. There being no morning moon, I knew he had not stirred before sunrise, and might, therefore, be browsing, or standing under some tree quite near; so continued my way most cautiously, never following the tracks when they crossed an open, unless obliged to do so on account of the ground being frozen hard, so that it often took me a long time to get his trail again after leaving it; but I knew, if the buck once saw or got a sniff of me, he might run ten miles without stopping.
“About eleven o’clock I sighted him. I was peeping cautiously out of a thicket, at whose edge I had just arrived, into a large park-like glade, and saw him under a big white-oak-tree, eating the acorns. There was no cover between me and where the buck stood, so I could not risk trying to get nearer to him except by making a long detour, and the nearest edge of the timber I was in was too far off him to risk a shot from. There was, therefore, nothing for it but to sit down and wait until he pleased to move on or lie down, and so give me a chance to get nearer. Being hungry, I utilized the time by eating my luncheon, and then fell to smoking. Well, he kept me there over an hour, and then started off in a straight line in a trot. As he took a bee-line for the river, I knew what he was after: he was going to take his ‘little drink.’ I, too, should have liked to indulge in a little drink, to wash down my luncheon.
“As soon as the buck was well under way I started at the double, on a parallel course, hoping to get a shot at him in the river’s bottom. I crossed the open ground of a valley in a bend that was above and out of sight of the course he was taking, got into the cover along the river’s bank, and followed it down, but saw nothing of him. By and by I came to where the buck had drunk. He had there crossed the river and gone straight on at a long easy trot towards the Sierra Vérde.
“Should he intend going up the mountain my chance of seeing him again that day was over; if he was going to feed in the piñon ridges, then careful stalking and the avoidance of all mistakes would make him my meat. I could not afford to lose time by going to a beaver dam to cross, so at once peeled and waded over.
“After going about two miles, the buck’s tracks showed he had subsided into a walk, and then almost immediately turned, to my great satisfaction, into the piñon-ridge country, in which, after about an hour’s careful stalking, I sighted him again. He was strolling along, feeding; but it was getting pretty well on towards sunset before I was able to approach close enough to him to care to fire a shot, for I had taken so much trouble that I was determined to incur no risk I could avoid, but have patience until I had a certainty of killing him in his tracks. At last he stopped to browse in a little open, oval table-land, on the summit of a cedar ridge.
“The ridge-top was nowhere over a hundred yards across, and was surrounded with a thick fringe of dwarf cedars. Peeping through one of these dwarf cedars, I could see the deer’s broad fat quarters about forty yards in front of me. The buck was slowly walking from where I stood concealed. I put my cap in a fork of the cedar, laid my rifle-barrel on it, brought its stock to my shoulder, and bleated like a doe.
“The big buck stopped, turned his body half round, his head wholly so, and looked straight towards me with his head down.
“I drew a careful bead between his eyes, and dropped him—stone-dead!
“I ran up to bleed him, feeling quite relieved and glad at so successful a termination of ten hours’ difficult hunting. I had not noticed it while engrossed by the interest of pursuit, but now found I was very hungry, and so lit a fire at once, that there might be roasting-coals ready by the time I had skinned my deer.
“I was soon enjoying a jolly rib-roast, making a tremendous meal, and recruiting myself for the tramp of from twelve to fifteen miles lying between me and the camp.”