CHAPTER IX.

STEP HEN'S GREAT LUCK.

"Snakes! well, Step Hen, you're away off, if you think they're ever found out, with the weather as biting as it is right now!" laughed Thad; who sized up the situation instantly, and knew full well there was nothing of the sort the matter with his hunting companion.

"Well, anyway, _something_ gave me a bite, and you can see the blood on my hand right now, Thad," whined Step Hen, crawling once more into view, and looking as though he could not be convinced to the contrary of his statement, just because of a little frost.

He held up his left hand as he spoke. Thad took hold of it, and with those keen eyes of his, managed to grapple with the facts immediately.

"You only managed to strike up against a sliver of wood, and got a splinter in your hand," he declared; "see here, I can show you," saying which he used the nails of his finger and thumb for a forceps, and drew out a little splinter that had pushed under the skin, just far enough to bring a drop or two of blood, and give Step Hen a sharp pain.

"Oh! thank you, Thad!" exclaimed the other, as though vastly relieved. "You see, I just detest all kinds of crawlers the worst kind; and that talk about rattlers, and the bounty paid for their tails, must have been hanging on my mind. When I felt that sudden sharp jab, of course the first thing that flashed into my brain was that I'd tumbled on the nest of a rattlesnake, and he took me for one of the bounty jumpers. But only a sliver of wood--huh, I can stand that easy enough."

"Suck it good and plenty," advised the far seeing Thad. "I always do as soon as I get a cut of any kind, and especially if it's a splinter. Sometimes it keeps you from getting poison in your system, that makes a bad sore."

Step Hen obediently did as he was told. At least he had implicit confidence in the patrol leader, and was ready to follow his advice under the slightest provocation. That was a feather in the cap of Thad Brewster, in that he possessed the full confidence of his comrades. They believed in him, and were never in a state of mutiny concerning the orders he gave, as leader of the Silver Fox Patrol.

Once more the two boys tramped on. Thad thought it might be as well to impart a little useful information concerning the dormant condition of all snakes during winter time; and how many a bunch of the wrigglers he had found, while the cold season was on, looking as though they were frozen stiff.

This information he imparted in almost a whisper as they moved along. When out looking for deer, a muffler on speech is of paramount importance; and knowing all about this, Thad soon relapsed into silence.

"Tell you more some other time, Step Hen," he remarked as a wind-up; "that is, if you care to hear more about snakes. No matter how you dislike the breed, you really ought to know more than you seem to, about their habits. It might be the means of saving you from trouble some fine day, when, by accident, you happen to run across some reptile in the woods. And now we'll forget all that. I'm not going to say another word, unless I have to."

They kept pushing on; and Step Hen began to believe they must be many miles from their starting point; at any rate he began to feel a little heavy-footed, though too proud to mention the fact to Thad. Besides, Step Hen had walked pretty good distances before, and believed that he must soon get what he called his "second wind." After that he would be good for hours, he fancied.

It must have been well on to eleven o'clock when Thad felt his companion nudge him in the back. As he turned to look, Step Hen made a suggestive gesture with his head, and pointed upwards.

There was a dead gray sky above them, and already a few scattered flakes of snow, really the first of the season, were drifting downward, looking like tiny feathers plucked from the downy breast of a snow goose.

Thad simply nodded his head to indicate that he too had observed them; and at the same time he shook his finger toward Step Hen, afraid lest the other might be itching to start a conversation. In fact, this was just what the other scout was hoping to do. This grim silence had begun to work upon his nerves--just walking on and on, with not a blessed sign of the fine buck they expected to get, commenced to pall upon Step Hen, in whom the instincts of a hunter had never been born; although of late he had begun to develop a taste for roaming the woods with a gun over his shoulder. But he had much to learn concerning the secrets that Nature hides from most eyes, but which are as the page of an open book to the favored few.

Step Hen began to twist his head around frequently. At first Thad thought he was developing a new eagerness to discover signs of game; but then he soon saw that the wistful expression on the other's face was brought about by quite a different cause.

To tell the honest truth about it, Step Hen was trying to figure out in his benighted brain just what the cardinal points of the compass might be. It was not that he possessed any alarming interest in proving certain facts Thad and Allan had explained, concerning the fascinating game of learning where the north lay by marks on the trees; the general direction in which they slanted; signs of moss on the north or northwest side of the tree, and various other well proven methods of locating one's self. Oh! nothing of the kind. Step Hen wanted to find out one particular fact. They had started _north_ when leaving camp; and now, if he could only learn that they were heading due south, it would tell him that Thad had swung around, and was facing back home again; and thus he would not be under the painful necessity of informing his companion that he was tired of the useless hunt, when nothing worth while showed up.

And then it happened!

Step Hen happened to have his eyes in the right quarter when suddenly a fine big buck sprang to its feet, and stared at them a second or two, before starting to spring away. They had been heading up into the wind all the time, which was a part of Thad's principle as a true still hunter; and the deer had not known of their presence until the greenhorn happened to step on a small branch, which snapped under his weight.

Possibly Step Hen never really knew just how he did it. Indeed, he afterwards confessed to himself that his ready little rifle just seemed to swing upward to his shoulder by some instinct, which was probably the exact truth; for hunters seldom have time to do any thinking.

He saw that splendid deer standing there before him. Now, Step Hen had often fired a target rifle at just such a picture of a deer as this in the shooting gallery in Cranford. And when he took a hasty aim just behind the shoulder of the startled buck, he was really following out his usual custom of covering the bull's-eye on the artificial deer, so familiar to his boyish eyes.

Bang! went the rifle, as he pressed the trigger.

Thad had his double-barreled gun in readiness, and could have supplemented the shot of Step Hen by pouring in a broadside of small bullets that must have dropped the animal in his tracks. But he refrained, for his instinct seemed to tell him that the missile from Step Hen's little rifle had struck home, as the buck gave a convulsive leap, and pitched over; and Thad knew how much a new beginner in the game delights in the knowledge that he has accomplished the work of bringing down a deer unassisted.

True, the buck managed to scramble to its feet again, and run; but even then the patrol leader held his fire, for he knew that the animal could not go more than a hundred or two feet before it must drop.

"I rung the bell then, Thad; didn't you hear me?" almost shrieked Step Hen, so excited that he never once thought of pumping the exploded cartridge from the firing chamber of his repeating rifle, and sending a fresh one in after it; and then, as the stricken buck scrambled to his feet again, and went off at a wobbling gait the astonished and dismayed Step Hen, who should have been prepared to send in another shot on his own account, actually forgot that he held a rifle calculated to repeat, and wildly besought his chum to fire.

"Oh! there he's going to get away after all, Thad!" he cried, jumping up and down in his excitement; "why don't you blaze away, and knock my buck over? Thad, oh, do let him have it good and hard! There, now he's gone, and we've lost him! It's a shame, that's what it is, when I so nearly got him. And he had six prongs too! Oh, me! oh, my! what tough luck!"

"Don't worry, Step Hen," said Thad, quickly; "that deer can't get away. You shot him to pieces, and he's just bound to drop before five minutes. We'll just follow him up, and find him lying as dead as----"

Just what Thad had in mind as a comparison Step Hen never knew. Perhaps he was going to say "as dead as a door nail," that being a favorite expression among the scouts; or it might be Thad meant to take a little flight into ancient history, and compare the condition of that buck inside of five minutes with the Julius Caesar of olden Roman times. It did not matter.

He was interrupted by a sudden loud explosion. The sound came from the quarter in which the buck had just gone, and could not have been far distant. And even the tenderfoot understood what it meant.

"Oh! listen to that, would you, Thad?" he burst forth with. "There's somebody else hunting up in this neck of the woods, and they've got my fine buck! Now, ain't that the worst thing ever; and just when it began to look as if he ought to belong to me, too; for you said he was hard hit; and I just know I rung the bell with that bullet. And now I reckon it's all off. Oh! why _didn't_ you knock him over when you had the chance, Thad?"

"I sure would if I'd had the least suspicion that there was any other hunter around these diggings," declared Thad, with a frown on his usually smooth brow; for he instantly began to scent trouble. "But come on, let's start along, and see what it all means. Perhaps now old Eli, or Jim may have wandered out to take a little side hunt."

"But anyway, it's _my_ buck, Thad; you said I got him!" grumbled Step Hen, as he started after his leader.

They had no trouble in following in the direction taken by the stricken deer; even Step Hen, upon having his attention directed to the ground by Thad, could readily discern the trail of blood spots that told how the buck had been badly hurt by the shot back of the shoulder.

And less than three minutes later the two scouts came upon a scene that caused Thad to frown; while Step Hen's mouth opened with surprise, even as his eyes were unduly dilated in his intense excitement.