does in plain sight. On top the snow was light, and they bounded
ahead with fresh strength. The trail led straight along the edge
of a cliff, beyond which the deer had vanished. They had stopped
running here; I noticed with amazement that they had walked with
quick short steps across the open. Eager for a sight of the buck
I saw only the thin powdering of snow; I forgot the glare ice
that covered the rock beneath. The deer's sharp hoofs had clung
to the very edge securely. My heedless feet had barely struck the
rock when they slipped and I shot over the cliff, thirty feet to
the rocks below. Even as I fell and the rifle flew from my grasp,
I heard the buck's loud whistle from the thicket where he was
watching me, and then the heavy plunge of the deer as they jumped
away.

A great drift at the foot of the cliff saved me. I picked myself
up, fearfully bruised but with nothing broken, found my rifle and
limped away four miles through the woods to the road, thinking as
I went that I was well served for having delivered the deer "from
the power of the dog," only to take advantage of their long run
to secure a head that my skill had failed to win. I wondered,
with an extra twinge in my limp, whether I had saved Old Wally by
taking the chase out of his hands unceremoniously. Above all, I
wondered--and here I would gladly follow another trail over the
same ground--whether the noble beast, grown weary with running,
his splendid strength failing for the first time, and his little,
long-tended flock ready to give in and have the tragedy over,
knew just what he was doing in mincing along the cliff's edge
with his heedless enemy close behind. What did he think and feel,
looking back from his hiding, and what did his loud whistle mean?
But that is always the despair of studying the wild things. When