fteen
feet from me, began to shake and struggle. He raised his head, uttering
a choking gasp. I heard the flutter of blood in his throat. He raised
himself on his front feet and lifted his head high, higher, until his
nose pointed skyward and his antlers lay back upon his shoulders. Then a
strong convulsion shook him. I heard the shuddering wrestle of his whole
body. I heard the gurgle and flow of blood. Saw the smoke of fresh blood
and smelled it! I saw a small red spot in his gray breast where my
bullet had struck. I saw a great bloody gaping hole on his rump where
the.30 Gov't expanding bullet had come out. From end to end that bullet
had torn! Yet he was not dead. Straining to rise again!

I saw, felt all this in one flashing instant. And as swiftly my spirit
changed. What I might have done I never knew, but most likely I would
have shot him through the brain. Only a sudden action of the stag
paralyzed all my force. He lowered his head. He saw me. And dying, with
lungs and heart and bowels shot to shreds, he edged his stiff front feet
toward me, he dragged his afterquarters, he slid, he flopped, he
skittered convulsively at me. No fear in the black, distended, wild
eyes!

Only hate, only terrible, wild, unquenchable spirit to live long enough
to kill me! I saw it, He meant to kill me. How magnificent, how horrible
this wild courage! My eyes seemed riveted upon him, as he came closer,
closer. He gasped. Blood sputtered from his throat. But more terrible
than agony, than imminent death was the spirit of this wild beast to
slay its enemy. Inch by inch he skidded closer to me, with a convulsive
quivering awful to see. No veil of the past, no scale of civilization
between beast and man then! Enemies as old as the earth! I had shot him
to eat, and he would kill me before he died. For me the moment was
monstrous. No hunter was I then, but a man stricken by the spirit and
mystery of life, by the agony and terror of death, by the awful strange
sense that this stag would kill me.

But Copple galloped up, and drawing his revolver, he shot the deer
through the head. It fell in a heap.

"Don't ever go close to a crippled deer," admonished my comrade, as he
leaped off his horse. "I saw a fellow once that was near killed by a
buck he'd taken for dead.... Strange the way this buck half stood up.
Reckon he meant bad, but he was all in. You hit him plumb center."

"Yes, Ben, it was--strange," I replied, soberly. I caught Copple'