to his lips and finding it empty let it slip
heedlessly to the ground.

"Two shots," he muttered darkly. "Two, where one should have been
enough."

That echo of the night before helped the other man to decide.

"This strip of dark timber runs straight west to the river--are you
listening, Garry?" he asked. "Straight to the river--it's only a scant
mile--and you'll find the cabin on the rise of ground in a clump of
balsams, three or four rods to the right. I'm going to take your
gun--you look fagged out. You skirt around the edge of the bad going
and I'll drive straight through. It may be only a scratch, after all,
although it doesn't seem possible, with all this blood. I'll take your
gun and, now, are you sure you can make it--sure you won't get turned
around? It'll be dark in half an hour, you know."

Garry gave up his rifle without a sign of demur. His eyes were burning
with some sort of feverish anticipation, but his answer was clear
enough.

"I'll wait for you at the river," he said, and he started forthwith
toward the west.

Steve watched him out of sight before he turned to take up,
irresolutely, the trail that zig-zagged into the cedar brake. But once
he had started he went ahead rapidly, jumping the wounded buck within
five minutes and giving him no time to lie down again. And after he
had covered a quarter of a mile Steve saw that it was much as he had
told Garry it might be; it was a flesh wound that bled profusely and
that was all. For the deer, holding to a direct line down the middle
of the swamp, continued to travel strongly. Steve had all but reached
the river-edge where they were to stop for the night, before he
detected a stirring in the bushes ahead of him and his ear caught the
crackle of a dry branch.

Instantly he forgot everything save the quarry he was running down;
forgot Garry and the strange persistence with which the latter had gone
back, after twelve hours, to quote himself word for word. With rifle
poised he edged forward a step and halted; he stooped and laid Garry's
gun at the foot of a tree and went on again. Once he made out a
movement behind a nearer tangle and saw the branches shake before a
heavy body that was forcing slowly through them. His own rifle came
up; his finger was on the trigger when he thought better of it. Old
Tom, more than a half-score of years before, had switched him well, not
so very far from that very spot, because he had not made certain