p. 10 (730) | IN THE NAME OF SPORT by Ernest Seton Thompson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 13, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 46.

IN THE NAME OF SPORT.

By Ernest Seton Thompson

Within half a mile they found blood on the trail; within another half mile the blood was no more seen, and the track seemed to have grown very large and strong. The snow was drifting and the marks not easily read, yet Yan knew very soon that the track they were on was not that of the wounded doe, but was surely that of her antlered mate. Back on the trail they ran till they solved the doubt; for there they learned that the stag, after making his own escape, had come back to change off. This is an old, old trick of the hunted, whereby one deer will cleverly join on and carry on the line of tracks to save another that is too hard pressed, while it leaps aside to hide or fly in a different direction. Thus the stag had sought to save his wounded mate, but the hunters remorselessly took up her trail, and gloated like wolves over the slight drip of blood. Within another short run they found that the stag,

having failed to divert the chase to himself, had returned to her, and at sundown they sighted them a quarter of a mile ahead mounting a long snow slope. The doe was walking slowly with hanging head and ears. The buck was running about as if in trouble that he did not understand, and coming back to caress the doe and wonder why she walked so slowly. In another half mile the hunters came up with them. She was down in the snow. When he saw them coming, the great stag shook the oak-tree on his brow and circled about in doubt, then fled from a foe he was powerless to resist.

As the men came near, the doe made a convulsive effort to rise, but could not. Duff drew his knife. It never before occurred to Yan why he and each of them carried a long knife. The poor doe turned on her foes her great lustrous eyes; they were brimming with tears, but she made no moan. Yan turned his back on the scene, and covered his face with his hands; but Duff went forward with the knife and did some dreadful, unspeakable thing, Yan scarcely knew what; and when Duff called him, he slowly turned, and the big stag’s mate was lying quiet in the snow, and the only living thing that they saw, as they quit the scene, was the great round form bearing aloft the oak-tree on its brow as it haunted the nearer hills.—Ernest Seton Thompson, in Scribner’s.