The Pioneers | Page 8

at that period. A
few months afterward death had deprived him of the remaining
companion of his solitude; but still he had enough real regard for his
child not to bring her into the comparative wilderness in which he
dwelt, until the full period had expired to which he had limited her
juvenile labors. The reflections of the daughter were less melancholy,
and mingled with a pleased astonishment at the novel scenery she met
at every turn in the road.
The mountain on which they were journeying was covered with pines
that rose without a branch some seventy or eighty feet, and which
frequently doubled that height by the addition of the tops. Through the
innumerable vistas that opened beneath the lofty trees, the eye could
penetrate until it was met by a distant inequality in the ground, or was
stopped by a view of the summit of the mountain which lay on the
opposite side of the valley to which they were hastening. The dark

trunks of the trees rose from the pure white of the snow in regularly
formed shafts, until, at a great height, their branches shot forth
horizontal limbs, that were covered with the meagre foliage of an
evergreen, affording a melancholy contrast to the torpor of nature
below. To the travellers there seemed to be no wind; but these pines
waved majestically at their topmost boughs, sending forth a dull,
plaintive sound that was quite in consonance with the rest of the
melancholy scene.
The sleigh had glided for some distance along the even surface, and the
gaze of the female was bent in inquisitive and, perhaps, timid glances
into the recesses of the forest, when a loud and continued howling was
heard, pealing under the long arches of the woods like the cry of a
numerous pack of hounds. The instant the sounds reached the ear of the
gentleman he cried aloud to the black:
“Hol up, Aggy; there is old Hector; I should know his bay among ten
thousand! The Leather-Stocking has put his hounds into the hills this
clear day, and they have started their game. There is a deer-track a few
rods ahead; and now, Bess, if thou canst muster courage enough to
stand fire, I will give thee a saddle for thy Christmas dinner.”
The black drew up, with a cheerful grin upon his chilled features, and
began thrashing his arms together in order to restore the circulation of
his fingers, while the speaker stood erect and, throwing aside his outer
covering, stepped from the sleigh upon a bank of snow which sustained
his weight without yielding.
In a few moments the speaker succeeded in extricating a double-
barrelled fowling-piece from among a multitude of trunks and
bandboxes. After throwing aside the thick mittens which had encased
his hands, there now appeared a pair of leather gloves tipped with fur;
he examined his priming, and was about to move forward, when the
light bounding noise of an animal plunging through the woods was
heard, and a fine buck darted into the path a short distance ahead of him.
The appearance of the animal was sudden, and his flight inconceivably
rapid; but the traveller appeared to be too keen a sportsman to be
disconcerted by either. As it came first into view he raised the

fowling-piece to his shoulder and, with a practised eye and steady hand,
drew a trigger. The deer dashed forward undaunted, and apparently
unhurt. Without lowering his piece, the traveller turned its muzzle
toward his victim, and fired again. Neither discharge, however, seemed
to have taken effect,
The whole scene had passed with a rapidity that confused the female,
who was unconsciously rejoicing in the escape of the buck, as he rather
darted like a meteor than ran across the road, when a sharp, quick
sound struck her ear, quite different from the full, round reports of her
father’s gun, but still sufficiently distinct to be known as the concussion
produced by firearms. At the same instant that she heard this
unexpected report, the buck sprang from the snow to a great height in
the air, and directly a second discharge, similar in sound to the first,
followed, when the animal came to the earth, failing head long and
rolling over on the crust with its own velocity. A loud shout was given
by the unseen marksman, and a couple of men instantly appeared from
behind the trunks of two of the pines, where they had evidently placed
them selves in expectation of the passage of the deer.
“Ha! Natty, had I known you were in ambush, I should not have fired,”
cried the traveller, moving toward the spot where the deer lay—near to
which he was followed by the delighted black, with his sleigh; “but the
sound of