and, concealed by the last bushes on the edge, he reached the
open plain. Two hundred yards off was the buck, nosing among the
herbage, and, from time to time, raising its superb head and
columnar neck to look around. There was no cover but creeping
herbage. Rolf suspected that the Indian would decoy the buck by
some whistle or challenge, for the thickness of its neck showed
the deer to be in fighting humour.

Flat on his breast the Indian lay. His knees and elbow seemed to
develop centipedic power; his head was a mere clump of growing
stuff. He snaked his way quietly for twenty-five yards, then came
to the open, sloping shore, with the river forty yards wide of
level shining ice, all in plain view of the deer; how was this to
be covered?

There is a well-known peculiarity of the white tail that the
Indian was counting on; when its head is down grazing, even
though not hidden, the deer does not see distant objects; before
the head is raised, its tail is raised or shaken. Quonab knew
that if he could keep the tail in view, he could avoid being
viewed by the head. In a word, only an ill-timed movement or a
whiff could betray him.

The open ice was, of course, a hard test, and the hunter might
have failed, but that his long form looked like one of the logs
that were lying about half stranded or frozen in the stream.

Watching ever the alert head and tail, he timed his approach,
working hard and moving East when the head was down; but when
warned by a tail-jerk he turned to a log nor moved a muscle. Once