ck, grazing along, and then for no reason
in the world beat back on their tracks, or turned to right or left. They
even went so far as to lie down, chewing most contentedly.

One hour went by--two--when suddenly the buck rose and walked straight up
the canyon in a course that would take him within twenty feet of the
rock. Jim heard him snort and prepared for action, laying hold of a
corner of stone to get a spring from all-fours.

The deer's shadow floated black on the grass before him, and Jim
leaped--to the biggest surprise of his life, for instead of making the
least effort to escape, the buck charged, and that with such sudden fury
it was all the man could do to lay hold of him anywhere as they came to
dirt together.

The next ten seconds was delirium, each combatant doing something as
quick as he could without any definite aim. Jim received a painful rake
across the chest from the antlers, and a jab in the leg from the sharp
hoofs, while the deer was the worse for several bangs over the head and
an ear nearly pulled off, as they rolled over together.

It came over Jim with the force of a revelation that he had got into a
very different business from that which he had intended. Instead of the
"timid deer" whose capture was the difficulty, he found himself engaged
with a horned and hoofed demon, and the problem was how to get away.

Meanwhile, Ches had legged it down the hill-side at his best speed,
enthusiastically cheering what he supposed was a prearranged performance.
Jim had promised him fun, and that whirling heap below supplied plenty of
it.

"Hooray!" yelled Ches. "Hooray! Hold him dere, Jim, till I get down!"

Jim heard the shrill voice, as he succeeded, after a desperate effort, in
getting an arm around the deer's neck, so that he could do something in
the choking line, and he smiled grimly in the heat of battle. "All right,
Ches!" he gasped. "Don't--hurry!"

"Keep out of this!" he yelled a moment later as Ches burst out from the
bushes. "You'll get killed!"

But Ches was not to be denied. He danced around the pushing, tugging,
straining storm-center, and the moment opportunity offered, slipped in
and seized the buck by a hind leg.

If he had touched an electric battery, the effect could not have been
more instant. The deer fanned that muscular hind leg, with its boy
attachment, at the rate of seven hundred strokes to the minute. Poor
Ches' head was nearly snapped off his shoulders, and the breat