n for raking the victims. "Old traps" took a
lodge in a clump of bushes. Dr. C. and I squatted on a dead tree, with a
few bushes around it, and in a particularly dark spot, from the fact of
some very heavy timber with wide-spreading tops standing around and
nearly over us.

The ability of keeping still in a disagreeable situation, for a long
time, is most desirable and necessary in the character of a
hunter;--some men have a faculty for holding a fishing-rod hours at a
time over a fishless tide, with wondrous ardor; and I have known men to
watch deer, bear, and other game, in one position, for ten or twenty
hours. Sauntering up and down in the dark, with wind and rain, and a
musket in your arms for company, is not pleasant pastime; but my
patience revolted at the idea of squatting on the wet log, all cramped
up, three or four hours, and no deer making their appearance; Doctor and
I made up our minds to arouse "old traps," and patter back to the camp.
Just as the resolution was about to be put in action, two deer, fine
antlered customers, made their appearance about three hundred yards from
us, out on a small plain, where their sprightly forms could just be made
out as they leisurely stepped along. Getting near "old traps," he soon
convinced us that _his_ eye was still open, although we had concluded he
was fast asleep. The sharp, whip-like crack of "old traps'" rifle
brought down one of the deer, and the other, in bounds of thirty or
forty feet at a spring, whisked nearly over us, and the Doctor and I
fired at the flying deer as he came; neither shot took effect, and off
he sped.

"Hurrah! for the old boy!" shouted the Doctor, as we all bustled up to
where the deer lay kicking and plunging in his death throes. "By Jove,
'traps,' you've put a ball clean through his head!"

"Yes, sir," said traps; "I ollers fix game that way, myself."

"Except when you fix them with the traps, eh?" said I.

"'Zactly," said traps. "But now, boys," he continued loading up his
rifle, "now let's snatch off the creature's hide, quarter it, and travel
back to the camp, for we ain't gwoine to have any more deer to-night."

This was soon accomplished. Trap seized the hind quarters and hide, and
travelled; Doctor and I brought up the rear with the rest of the meat
and fat.

To avoid the muddy "bottom," in going back, we concluded to take a
little round-about way, and relieved one another by taking "spells" at
carrying the rifles and the me