"Yes--dat's so--but I've heard deer-meat was good." Ches was disappointed at this manner of hunting.

"So it is," replied Jim, "probably n.o.body has that notion stronger than the deer." He followed the four pretty animals below them with tense eyes. He loved to hunt but he hated to kill.

"See here, boy," he said, sitting down and pulling off his boots, "I think I can show you some fun--do you notice they're feeding up to that nose of rock? Well I used to be rather quick on my feet once, and I think if I can slip down behind there without their winding me, if one gets close enough I can catch him with my hands--which is a trick I'd like muchly to accomplish. Now you sit here and watch, and for your life, don't make a move or sound! By Jiminy! if I could do that!" He trotted light-footed down the slope out of sight.

The boy soon saw him reappear behind the sharp rock-wall that jutted out into the valley, rubbing crushed pine-needles upon himself with the idea of overpowering the human odor, although, whether effective in its purpose or not, it was not necessary--a strong up-wind from deer to man making it impossible that they could scent him.

They waited and they waited, a big man crouched like a tiger below, and a highly excited small boy above, while the deer did every exasperating thing that animals could do.

They started straight for the rock, 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 canon 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 gra.s.s 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 breath was literally jerked out of his body, but he hung on, with all the strength that pulling the car had given him.

It was not much help, but it was a diversion. Jim gulped a lungful of air, gathered his powers and came down with all his might. Slowly the stubborn neck, bent--so slowly that Jim feared he would give out before gaining the mastery. As it yielded, his leverage increased, and at last, exerting every ounce of strength that was in him, he downed the foe and held him there, his leg over the front legs whose armament he had felt before, and was not desirous of feeling again.

But the deer gave up the struggle, and lay quiet, looking up with great pleading eyes.

"Yes, you devil!" cried Jim, "you look meek enough now, but if you weren't a handful of hard luck ten seconds ago I never ran across one.

You hurt, Ches?"

"I got a lovely t'ump on me smeller, but I'm in it yet--do I let go or don't I?"

"Not on your life--wait a moment!" He worked his weight over on the deer's body. "Now!" he said. "Quick! Jump loose!" Again the deer glanced up reproachfully, as though to say, "How suspicious you are!"

The instant Ches jumped clear, so did Jim. They watched their late antagonist, who sprang to his feet and went off with frisky leaps, apparently as fresh as ever.

Then they looked at each other. Ches was rubbing his stomach with his left hand, while he wiped the blood from his nose with the right. Jim's coat and trousers were torn; he had a deep scratch across his chest, a gouge in his leg, and he trembled from the exertion.

"Well--Ches!" he panted, "we've--had--a--nice--rest--haven't we?"

"Wouldn't it 'a' been tur'ble if yer hadn't caught him?" replied Ches.

And then they simply whooped.

A good incident is an opal among gems in a lonely life. You can turn it over and over and always get new colors.

On the home trip, as Nimrod Jim stalked along with his follower trotting beside, they rehea.r.s.ed every detail of the unexpected encounter. Jim crouched and leaped again, giving his sensations when the buck did likewise. Then he waited while Ches ran down a side hill and threw himself upon a sapling, which for the time was a deer's hind leg.

They were just of an age--any one would have said so, on seeing them approach the cabin, arms flying, tongues wagging, bruised, tired and happy.

"Jim," said a very sleepy little boy after supper, gorged like an anaconda, "yer don't see t'ings like dat in N'york--not much yer don't. If dat racket had come off in der Bowery, dere'd be head-lines--'dlines--on der extries--more'n a mile--"

Jim picked him up and tucked him into his bunk. "More'n a mile long--g'

nigh'," sighed Ches.

Jim lit his pipe and went out for an evening smoke. It was some little time the next morning before he could realize what he was doing out there under the tree.

He had been in some ways a graver man of late. What he had undertaken as an experiment, a generous impulse, had been turned into a lasting responsibility.

IV

On the second day after Ches' arrival, Bud had come through with the mail, and before leaving, drew Jim aside, out of the boy's hearing.

"The little feller's yours agin all comers now, Jim," he said.

"What's that?" asked Jim, surprised by the meaning in the tone.

"He's _yours_," repeated Bud. "That sweet-scented blossom that called himself the boy's dad, filled his skin with red-eye farther up the line and settled the fuss he had with his dame."

"Hurt her?"

"Man!" said Bud slowly, "he used a knife a foot long--gave it to her a dozen times as hard as he could drive--what's your opinion?"

"Lord Almighty! Did he get away? But no, of course he couldn't, being on the train--"

"He didn't get away. The Con. wired the news to Kimb.a.l.l.s. What was he to do when a small army of punchers boarded the train and took the prisoner?

He couldn't do nothing, and he never loved that black-muzzled whelp from the time he sa.s.sed him in the depot. The punchers took our friend out and tried him."

"Tried him?"

"With a rope. In three minutes by; the watch he was found wanting--your boy now, Jim, as I was telling you. Going to say anything to him about it?"

"Why," said Jim, bewildered, "why, I don't know, Bud--guess not, just yet, on general principles. What do you think?"

"Think you're right," said Bud. "The poor little rooster couldn't help but feel glad to hear the news, but it would sound kind of awful to hear a kid like that say he was glad two people were killed. Better wait till he's been with you a while, Jim, and learned something different."