“No, sir!” he said. “You boys know how, and can keep from breaking your necks. But I’m too old to learn.”
It was the day after Thanksgiving, when Joe, true to his word, had killed a hen and cooked the nearest thing he could to a real New England Thanksgiving dinner, that he and Tom, visiting the first of their yards early in the morning, came upon a tragedy.
There were no deer in sight as they approached, and on entering the packed path under the trees they heard no sounds. Pushing on, they came suddenly upon all five beautiful creatures, lying dead on the snow! There was blood on the snow, too, and one or two bodies had been somewhat eaten. But three of them had merely been killed wantonly, and not eaten at all.
The boys were furious. They cocked their rifles, and began a rapid, angry search for tracks. Yes—there they were—big, catlike paw tracks! The lion had crouched in the evergreens, sneaked up in the night when the herd were huddled close for mutual warmth, and laid them all low!
They circled the grove till they found the tracks leading away, and followed them as fast as they could. But, being on skis, they were soon baffled, as the lion had made at once for the steep, rocky cliffs. So they rushed to the other yard. Here the herd had not been disturbed. They were all browsing on a new path they had packed among some willows.
“Come,” Joe cried. “Back to see Mills and find out what to do! The old lion may get the other herd to-night.”
That night there was a moon, and the Ranger and the boys, clad in all their thickest clothes, with four pairs of woollen socks in their big, easy moccasins, with sweaters, fur coats, fleece-lined mittens and bearskin helmets, advanced on snow-shoes up the valley.
“The lion may come back to the carcases, or wolves may scent ’em and come,” Mills said, “or he may attack the other herd. Then, again, he may do nothing, and we’ll have to watch every night for a week. You two take the dead herd, and I’ll watch the other. Approach it up wind—don’t get on the windward side at all, and if you can find a good rest in a tree, get up in that, with a clear view of the opening. Let the lion get in close before you fire, and let him have it in the heart and head. There ought to be light enough to-night. Better have your guns in rest, pointed at the carcases, so you won’t have to make any noise lifting ’em.”
The Ranger and the scouts now separated, and Joe and Tom, making a wide circle to get sharp to leeward of the yard, moved silently over the deep snow, in the cold, clear, almost Arctic moonlight, with the great peaks of the Divide rising up like silvery ghosts far overhead. There was no noise in all the world, and no living thing except themselves, except once when a startled snow-shoe rabbit leaped across an opening, white as the snow he was half wallowing in.
“Say, this is spooky!” Joe whispered.