The Young Trailers | Page 8

know just how much powder it contained, without
taking the trouble of pouring it out. His bullets and wadding he carried
in a small leather pouch by his side.

When they reached the spring the sun was still a half hour high and
filled the west with a red glow. The forest there was tinted by it, and
seen thus in the coming twilight with those weird crimsons and scarlets
showing through it, the wilderness looked very lonely and desolate. An
ordinary boy, at the coming of night would have been awed, if alone,
by the stillness of the great unknown spaces, but it found an answering
chord in Henry.
"Wind's blowin' from the west," said Sol, and so they went to the
eastern side of the spring, where they lay down beside a fallen log at a
fair distance. There was another log, much closer to the spring, but
Ross conferring aside with Sol chose the farther one. "We want to teach
the boy how to shoot an' be of some use to himself, not to slaughter,"
said Ross. Then the three remained there, a long time, and noiseless.
Henry was learning early one of the first great lessons of the forest,
which is silence. But he knew that he could have learned this lesson
alone. He already felt himself superior in some ways to Ross and Sol,
but he liked them too well to tell them so, or to affect even equality in
the lore of the wilderness.
The sun went down behind the Western forest, and the night came on,
heavy and dark. A light wind began to moan among the trees. Henry
heard the faint bubble of the water in the spring, and saw beside him
the forms of his two comrades. But they were so still that they might
have been dead. An hour passed and his eyes growing more used to the
dimness, he saw better. There was still nothing at the spring, but by and
by Ross put his hand gently upon his arm, and Henry, as if by instinct,
looked in the right direction. There at the far edge of the forest was a
deer, a noble stag, glancing warily about him.
The stag was a fine enough animal to Ross and Sol, but to Henry's
unaccustomed eyes he seemed gigantic, the mightiest of his kind that
ever walked the face of the earth.
The deer gazed cautiously, raising his great head, until his antlers
looked to Henry like the branching boughs of a tree. The wind was
blowing toward his hidden foes, and brought him no omen of coming
danger. He stepped into the open and again glanced around the circle. It

seemed to Henry that he was staring directly into the deer's eyes, and
could see the fire shining there.
"Aim at that spot there by the shoulder, when he stoops down to drink,"
said Ross in the lowest of tones.
Satisfied now that no enemy was near, the stag walked to the spring.
Then he began to lower slowly the great antlers, and his head
approached the water. Henry slipped the barrel of his rifle across the
log and looked down the sights. He was seized with a tremor, but Ross
and Shif'less Sol, with a magnanimity that did them credit, pretended
not to notice it. The boy soon mastered the feeling, but then, to his
great surprise, he was attacked by another emotion. Suddenly he began
to have pity, and a fellow-feeling for the stag. It, too, was in the great
wilderness, rejoicing in the woods and the grass and the running
streams and had done no harm. It seemed sad that so fine a life should
end, without warning and for so little.
The feeling was that of a young boy, the instinct of one who had not
learned to kill, and he suppressed it. Men had not yet thought to spare
the wild animals, or to consider them part of a great brotherhood, least
of all on the border, where the killing of game was a necessity. And so
Henry, after a moment's hesitation, the cause of which he himself
scarcely knew, picked the spot near the shoulder that Ross had
mentioned, and pulled the trigger.
The stag stood for a moment or two as if dazed, then leaped into the air
and ran to the edge of the woods, where he pitched down head foremost.
His body quivered for a little while and then lay still.
Henry was proud of his marksmanship, but he felt some remorse, too,
when he looked upon his victim. Yet he was eager to tell his father and
his young sister and brother of his success. They took off the pelt and
cut up the deer. A part of the haunch Henry