track keenly; so I kept well away from it, creeping slowly up
till I rested behind a great burned stump within forty yards of
my game. There I fastened a red bandanna handkerchief to a stick
and waved it slowly above the stump.

Almost instantly there was a snort and a rustle of bushes in the
thicket above me. Peeking out I saw the evergreens moving
nervously; a doe's head appeared, her ears set forward, her eyes
glistening. I waved the handkerchief more erratically. My rifle
lay across the stump's roots, pointing straight at her;
but she was not the game I was hunting. Some more waving and
dancing of the bright color, some more nervous twitchings and
rustlings in the evergreens, then a whistle and a rush; the doe
disappeared; the movement ceased; the thicket was silent as the
winter woods behind me.

"They are just inside," I thought, "pawing the snow to get their
courage up to come and see." So the handkerchief danced on--one,
two, five minutes passed in silence; then something made me turn
round. There in plain sight behind me, just this side the fringe
of evergreen that lined the old road, stood my three deer in a
row--the big buck on the right--like three beautiful statues,
their ears all forward, their eyes fixed with intensest curiosity
on the man lying at full length in the snow with the queer red
flag above his head.

My first motion broke up the pretty tableau. Before I could reach
for my rifle the deer whirled and vanished like three winks,
leaving the heavy evergreen tips nodding and blinking behind them
in a shower of snow.