gained, over
crafty expedients invented or well utilized, over the satisfactory
matching of your reason, your instinct, your subtlety and skill against
the reason, instinct, subtlety, and skill of one of the wariest of
large wild animals.

Perversely enough the times when you did NOT see deer are more apt to
remain vivid in your memory than the times when you did. I can still
see distinctly sundry wide jump-marks where the animal I was tracking
had evidently caught sight of me and lit out before I came up to him.
Equally, sundry little thin disappearing clouds of dust; cracklings of
brush, growing ever more distant; the tops of bushes waving to the
steady passage of something remaining persistently concealed,--these
are the chief ingredients often repeated which make up deer-stalking
memory. When I think of seeing deer, these things automatically rise.

A few of the deer actually seen do, however, stand out clearly from the
many. When I was a very small boy possessed of a 32-20 rifle and large
ambitions, I followed the advantage my father's footsteps made me in
the deep snow of an unused logging-road. His attention was focused on
some very interesting fresh tracks. I, being a small boy, cared not at
all for tracks, and so saw a big doe emerge from the bushes not ten
yards away, lope leisurely across the road, and disappear, wagging
earnestly her tail. When I had recovered my breath I vehemently
demanded the sense of fooling with tracks when there were real live
deer to be had. My father examined me.

"Well, why didn't you shoot her?" he inquired dryly.

I hadn't thought of that.

In the spring of 1900 I was at the head of the Piant River waiting for
the log-drive to start. One morning, happening to walk over a slashing
of many years before in which had grown a strong thicket of white
popples, I jumped a band of nine deer. I shall never forget the
bewildering impression made by the glancing, dodging, bouncing white of
those nine snowy tails and rumps.

But most wonderful of all was a great buck, of I should be afraid to
say how many points, that stood silhouetted on the extreme end of a
ridge high above our camp. The time was just after twilight, and as we
watched, the sky lightened behind him in prophecy of the moon.

ON TENDERFEET

XI

ON TENDERFEET

The tenderfoot is a queer beast. He makes more trouble than ants at a
picnic, more work than a trespassing goat; he never sees anything,
k