ged to do so
on account of the ground being frozen hard, so that it often took me a
long time to get his trail again after leaving it; but I knew, if the
buck once saw or got a sniff of me, he might run ten miles without
stopping.

"About eleven o'clock I sighted him. I was peeping cautiously out of a
thicket, at whose edge I had just arrived, into a large park-like glade,
and saw him under a big white-oak-tree, eating the acorns. There was no
cover between me and where the buck stood, so I could not risk trying to
get nearer to him except by making a long detour, and the nearest edge
of the timber I was in was too far off him to risk a shot from. There
was, therefore, nothing for it but to sit down and wait until he pleased
to move on or lie down, and so give me a chance to get nearer. Being
hungry, I utilized the time by eating my luncheon, and then fell to
smoking. Well, he kept me there over an hour, and then started off in a
straight line in a trot. As he took a bee-line for the river, I knew
what he was after: he was going to take his 'little drink.' I, too,
should have liked to indulge in a little drink, to wash down my
luncheon.

"As soon as the buck was well under way I started at the double, on a
parallel course, hoping to get a shot at him in the river's bottom. I
crossed the open ground of a valley in a bend that was above and out of
sight of the course he was taking, got into the cover along the river's
bank, and followed it down, but saw nothing of him. By and by I came to
where the buck had drunk. He had there crossed the river and gone
straight on at a long easy trot towards the Sierra Verde.

"Should he intend going up the mountain my chance of seeing him again
that day was over; if he was going to feed in the pinon ridges, then
careful stalking and the avoidance of all mistakes would make him my
meat. I could not afford to lose time by going to a beaver dam to cross,
so at once peeled and waded over.

"After going about two miles, the buck's tracks showed he had
subsided into a walk, and then almost immediately turned, to my great
satisfaction, into the pinon-ridge country, in which, after about an
hour's careful stalking, I sighted him again. He was strolling along,
feeding; but it was getting pretty well on towards sunset before I was
able to approach close enough to him to care to fire a shot, for I had
taken so much trouble that I was determined to incur no risk I could
avoid, but have patienc