t was all lost on the
buck, which did not halt nor slacken his pace.

It was a terrifying sight as he plunged toward the lad with lowered head
and glowering front, for the deer was an exceptionally large and
powerful one, and he meant to kill the individual that had sent the
bullet into his side, and from which the red blood was already
streaming.

It may be said just here, that Nick Ribsam no longer doubted the
failure of the long-range shot of Herbert Watrous.

The imperiled lad drew a deep respiration, poised himself on his
advanced foot, and, swinging to one side, with a view of avoiding the
full force of the charge, he brought down the stock of his gun with the
utmost strength he could command.

It descended with great power--so far as a ten-year-old boy is
concerned--but it was not sufficient to throw the buck off his base nor
to interfere with his plan of procedure.

He struck the lad with tremendous force, sending the gun flying from his
grasp and knocking Nick fully a dozen feet. Never in all his life had
the boy received such a terrific shock, which drove the breath from his
body and sent him spinning, as it seemed, through twenty yards of space.

Poor Nick believed half his bones were broken and that he was mortally
hurt; but the result of the charge was most extraordinary.

As the antlers of the buck struck him he was thrown like a limp dummy
toward the fallen tree, and, in reality, his greatest peril was
therefrom. Had he been driven with full momentum against the solid
trunk, he would have been killed as if smitten by a lightning stroke.

But his feet were entangled in some way and he fell headlong, his
forehead within a few inches of the bark, and his head itself was driven
under the trunk, which at that point was perhaps a foot above the
ground.

Instinctively the nearly senseless lad did the only thing that could
save him. He crawled under the trunk, so that it stood like a roof over
him.

His head was toward the base, and he pushed along until the lessening
space would not permit him to go further.

Thus he lay parallel with the uprooted tree, his feet at a point where
the bark almost touched his heels, the space growing less and less
toward his shoulders, until the back of his head rested against the
shaggy bark and his nose touched the leaves.

He had scarcely done this when he heard a thud at his elbow: it was
made by the knife-like hoofs of the buck, who, rearing on his hind
legs, g