Love's Pilgrimage: A Novel

by Upton Sinclair

And so began a great adventure. Thyrsis wrote Miss Ethelynda that he would come; and that night he loaded up some more buckshot “shells”, and before dawn of the next day was out upon the hunt. The snow was gone now; and with soft shoes on his feet he wandered all day through the wilderness—and was rewarded by two chances to shoot at the white tails of flying deer.

And then came night, and he rigged up a “jack”, a forbidden apparatus made of a soap-box and a lantern and a tin-plate for a reflector. He had an ingenious arrangement of straps and cords, whereby he could fasten this upon his head; and he had found an old lumber-trail where the deer came to feed upon the soft grass. Down this he crept like a thief in the night, with the light gleaming ahead, and the deer tramping in the thickets and whistling their alarms. Now and then one would stand and stare, his eye-balls gleaming like coals of fire; and at last came the roar of the gun, and the jacklight tumbled to the ground. When Thyrsis lighted up again and went to examine, there were spots of blood upon the leaves—but no deer.

So the next day he was up again at dawn, watching by one of the runways to the lake. And then came another tramp, through the thickets and over the mountains—and more shots at the “flags” of the elusive enemy. Thyrsis’ back ached, and his feet were as if weighted with lead, but still he plodded on and on—it was his life against a deer’s.

If only he had had a boat, so that he could have set up his “jack” in that! But he had no boat—and so he wrapped himself in blankets and sat to watch another runway at sunset; and when no deer came he decided to stay on until the moon rose. It was a bitterly cold night, and his hands almost froze to the gun-barrel when he touched it. And the moon rose, and forthwith went behind a cloud—and then came a deer!

There was hardly a trace of motion in the air, but somehow the creature half-scented Thyrsis; and so it stood and trumpeted to the night. Oh, the wildness of that sound—and the thumping of the heart of the hunter, and the breathless suspense, and the burning desire. The deer would take a step, and a twig would crack; and then it would stand still again, and Thyrsis would listen, crouching like a statue, clutching his weapon and striving to penetrate the darkness. And then the deer would take two or three more steps, and stand again; and then, in sudden alarm, bound away; and then come back again, step by step—fascinated by this mysterious thing there in the darkness. For three mortal hours that creature pranced and cavorted about Thyrsis, while he waited with chattering teeth; then in the end it took a sudden fright, and went bounding away through the thicket.

So came another day’s hunting; and at sundown another watch by a runway; and another deer, that approached from the wrong direction, and came upon a man, worn out by three days and nights of effort, lying sound asleep at his post!

But there could be only one ending to this adventure. Thyrsis was out for a deer, and he would never quit until he got one. All his planning and wandering had availed him nothing; but now, the next morning, as he stepped out from his camp with a bucket in his hand—behold, at the edge of a thicket, a deer! Thyrsis stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly; and the deer stood staring at him.

It was a time of agony. Should he try to creep back to his gun, or should he make a sudden dash? He started to try the latter, and had a pang of despair as the deer whirled and bolted away. He leaped to the camp and grabbed his gun and sprang out into sight again—and there, off to the right, was another deer. It was a huge buck, with wide-spreading antlers, rising out of the bushes where it stood. It saw Thyrsis, and started away; and in a flash he raised his gun and fired. He saw the deer stumble, and he fired the other barrel; and then he started in wild pursuit.

He had been warned to beware of a wounded deer; but he forgot that—he forgot also that he had no more shells upon him. He ran madly through the forest, springing over fallen logs, plunging through thickets—he would have seized hold of the animal with his bare hands, if only he could have caught up with it.

The deer was badly hurt. It would leap ahead, and then stumble, half falling, and then leap again. Even in this way, the distance it covered was amazing; Thyrsis was appalled at the power of the creature, its tremendous bounds, the shock of its fall, and the crashing of the underbrush before it. It seemed like a huge boulder, leaping down a precipice; and Thyrsis stood at a safe distance and watched it. According to the poetry-books he should have been ashamed—perhaps moved to tears by the reproachful look in the great creature’s eyes. But assuredly the makers of the poetry-books had never needed the price of a railroad-ticket as badly as Thyrsis did!