One more adventure the Buck had that fall. Providence, or Fate, or someone took a hand in affairs, and rid the Glimmerglass of all hunters, not for that season alone, but for many years to come. One night, down beside a spring in the cedar swamp, the Buck found a half-decayed log on which a bag of salt had been emptied. He stayed there for an hour or two, alternately licking the salt and drinking the cold water, and it was as good as an ice-cream soda. The next night he returned for another debauch; but in the meantime two other visitors had been there, and both had seen his tracks and knew that he would come again. As he neared the spring, treading noiselessly on the soft moss, he heard two little clicks, and stopped short to see what they meant. Both were quick and sharp, and both had come at exactly the same instant; yet they were not quite alike, for one had come from the shutter of a camera, and one from the lock of a rifle. Across the salt-lick a photographer and a hunter were facing each other in the darkness, and each saw the gleam of the other's eyes and took him for a deer. So close together were the two clicks that neither man heard the sound of the other's weapon, and both were ready to fire—each in his own way.
The Buck stood and watched, and suddenly there came two bursts of flame—one of them so big and bright that it lit the woods like sheet-lightning. Two triggers had been touched at the same instant, and each did its work well. The flash-light printed on the sensitive plate a picture of a hunter in the act of firing, and the rifle sent a bullet straight through the photographer's forehead. The Buck saw it all as in a dream—the white flame of the magnesium powder; the rifle, belching out its fire and smoke; the camera, silent and harmless, but working just as surely; the two men, each straining his eyes for a sight of his game; the water gleaming in the fierce light, and the dark ranks of the cedars all around. And then, in the tenth of a second, it was all over, and the Buck was bumping against trees, and stumbling and floundering over roots, in his dazed haste to get away from this terrifying mystery. He heard one horrified shout from the hunter, but nothing from the photographer—and the woods were silent again.
That was the end of the hunting season at the Glimmerglass. With the hunter's trial for manslaughter, we and the Buck are not concerned; and there is nothing more to tell except that the next year the owners of the lands around the lake gave warning that all trespassers would be prosecuted. They wanted no more such tragedies on their property.
And so the Buck and his sweethearts and his rivals lived in peace, except that the rivals still quarrelled among themselves, as Nature meant them to. The Buck had reached his prime, but you are not to suppose that he began to age immediately afterward. It was long before his eye was dimmed or his natural force abated; and as the years went by, with their summers of lily-pads and tender young browse, and their autumns of beechnuts and fighting and love-making, the broad cloven track of his split foot was often to be found in the hard, smooth sand of the beach. Perhaps it is there now. I wish I could go and see.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.