ere he waited as motionless as if the breath
had departed his body.

Onward came the game. As the Trapper had suggested, the buck, with
mighty and far-reaching bounds, cleared the shrubby obstructions, and,
entering the runway, tore up the familiar path with the violence of a
tornado. Onward he came, his head flung upward, his antlers laid well
back, tongue lolling from his mouth, and his nostrils smoking with the
hot breaths that burst in streaming columns from them. Not until his
swift career had brought him exactly in front of his position did the
old man stir a muscle. But then, quick as the motion of the leaping
game, his rifle jumped to his cheek, and even as the buck was at the
central point of his leap, and suspended in the air, the piece cracked
sharp and clear, and the deer, stricken to his death, fell with a
crash to the ground. The quivering hounds rose to their feet, and
bayed long and deep; Wild Bill swung his hat and yelled; and for a
moment the woods rang with the wild cries of dogs and man.

[Illustration: THE OLD TRAPPER'S SHOT.]

"Lord-a-massy, Bill, what a mouth ye have when ye open it!" exclaimed
the Trapper, as he leisurely poured the powder into the still smoking
barrel. "Atween ye and the pups, it's enough to drive a man crazy. I
should sartinly think ye had never seed a deer shot afore, by the way
ye be actin'."

"I've seen a good many, as you know, John Norton; but I never saw one
tumbled over by a single bullet when at the very top of his jump, as
that one was. I surely thought you had waited too long, and I wouldn't
have given a cent for your chances when you pulled. It was a wonderful
shot, John Norton, and I would take just such another tramp as I have
had, to see you do it again, old man."

"It wasn't bad," returned the Trapper; "no, it sartinly wasn't bad,
for he was goin' as ef the Old Harry was arter him. I shouldn't wonder
ef he had felt the tech of lead down there in the holler, and the
smart of his hurt kept him flyin'. Let's go and look him over, and see
ef we can't find the markin's of the bullit on him."

In a moment the two stood above the dead deer.

"It is as I thought," said the Trapper, as he pointed with his ramrod
to a stain of blood on one of the hams of the buck. "The bullit drove
through his thigh here, but it didn't tech the bone, and was a sheer
waste of lead, fur it only sot him goin' like an arrer. Bill, I
sartinly doubt," continued the old man, as he measure