He often mounted a high hill to scan the white world for his foe, and the after-trail was a record of what he learned or feared. At last his trail came to a sudden end. This was a mystery until long study showed how he had returned backward on his own track for a hundred yards then bounded aside to fly in another direction. Three times he did this and then passed through an aspen thicket and, returning, lay down in this thicket near his own track so that in following, Yan must pass where the Stag could smell and hear him long before the trail brought the hunter over close.
All these doublings and many more like them were patiently unravelled, and the shortening bounds were straightened out once more till, as daylight waned, the tracks seemed to grow stale and the bounds again grow long. After a little, Yan became wholly puzzled, so he stopped right there and spent another wretched night. Next day at dawn he worked it out.
He found he had been running the trail he had already run. With a long hark back, the doubt was cleared. The desperate Stag had joined onto his old track and bounded aside at length to let the hunter follow the cold scent. But the join-on was found and the real trail read, and the tale that it told was of a great Stag wearing out, too tired to eat, too scared to sleep, and a tireless hunter after.
VIII
A last long follow brought the hunt back to familiar ground—a marsh-encompassed tract of woods with three ways in. There was the deer's trail entering. Yan felt he would not come out there, for he knew his foe was following. So swiftly and silently the hunter made for the second road on the down-wind side, and having hung his coat and sash there on a swaying sapling, he hastened to the third way out, and hid. After awhile, seeing nothing, Yan gave the low call that the jaybird gives when there's danger abroad in the woods.
All deer take guidance from the jay, and away off in the encompassed woods Yan saw the great Stag with wavering ears go up a high lookout. A low whistle turned him to a statue, but he was far away with many a twig between. For some seconds he stood sniffing the wind and gazing with his back to his foe, watching the back trail, where so long his enemy had been, but never dreaming of that enemy in ambush ahead. Then the breeze set the coat on the sapling afluttering. The Stag quickly quit the hillock, not leaping or crashing through the brush—he had years ago got past that—but, silent and weasel-like, threading the maze he disappeared. Yan crouched in the willow thicket and strained his every sense and tried to train his ears to watch the harder. A twig ticked in the copse he was in. Yan slowly rose with nerve and sense at tightest tense, the gun in line—and as he rose, then also rose, but fifteen feet away, a wondrous pair of bronze and ivory horns, a royal head, a noble form behind it, and face to face they stood, Yan and the Sandhill Stag. At last—at last, his life was in Yan's hands. The Stag flinched not but stood and gazed with those great ears and mournful, truthful eyes, and the rifle leaped but sank again, for the Stag stood still and calmly looked him in the eyes, and Yan felt the prickling fading from his scalp, his clenched teeth eased, his limbs, bent as to spring, relaxed and manlike stood erect.
"Shoot, shoot, shoot now! This is what you have toiled for," said a faint and fading voice, and spoke no more.
Yan remembered that night when he, himself, run down, had turned to face the hunting wolves. He remembered that night when the snow was red with crime and down between them now he dimly saw a vision of an agonized and dying doe, with great, sad eyes, that only asked, "What harm have I done you?" A change came over him and every thought of murder went from Yan as they gazed into each other's eyes—and hearts. For different thoughts and a wholly different concept of the Stag, coming—coming—had come.
"Oh, beautiful creature! One of our wise men has said, the body is the soul made visible; is your spirit then so beautiful—as beautiful as wise? We have long stood as foes, hunter and hunted, but now that is changed and we stand face to face, fellow-creatures looking in each other's eyes, not knowing each other's speech—but knowing motives and feelings. Now I understand you as I never did before; surely you at least in part understand me. For your life is at last in my power, yet you have no fear. I knew of a deer once, that, run down by the hounds, sought safety with the hunter, and he saved it—and you also I have run down and you boldly seek safety with me. Yes! you are as wise as you are beautiful. We are brothers, oh, bounding Blacktail! only I am the elder and stronger, and if only my strength could always be at hand to save you, you would never come to harm. Go now without fear, to range the piney hills; never more shall I follow your trail with the wild wolf rampant in my heart. Less and less as I grow do I see in your race mere flying marks, or butcher-meat. We have grown, little brother, and learned many things that you know not, but you have many a precious sense that is wholly hidden from us. Go now without fear of me.