A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the woods. Wolves
cease their cry in the last swift burst of speed that will bring
the game in sight. Then the dogs broke out of the cover behind
him with a fiercer howl that was too much for even his nerves to
stand. Nothing on earth could have met such a death unmoved. No
ears, however trained, could hear that fierce cry for blood
without turning to meet it face to face. With a mighty effort the
buck. whirled in the snow and gathered himself for the tragedy.

Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog that, with no
nose of his own for hunting, had followed the pirate leader for
mere love of killing. As he jumped for the throat, the buck, with
his last strength, reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore
feet clear of the snow, and plunged down again with a hard, swift
sabre-cut of his right hoof. It caught the dog on the neck as he
rose on the spring, and ripped him from ear to tail. Deer and dog
came down together. Then the buck rose swiftly for his last blow,
and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like lightning; one straight,
hard drive with the crushing force of a ten-ton hammer behind
it--and his first enemy was out of the hunt forever. Before he
had time to gather himself again the big yellow brindle, with the
hound's blood showing in nose and ears,--Old Wally's dog,--leaped
into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to a fierce growl as he
sprang for the buck's nose.

I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and jumped to meet
it. The club came down between the two heads; and there was no
reserve this time in the muscles that swung it. It caught the
brute fair on the head, where the nose begins to come up into the