Impossible we found it to ascend the other slope where we had seen the deer, so we had to ride up the canyon, a matter greatly to my liking.  Copple thought I was hunting with him, but really, except to follow him, I did not think of the meaning of his slow wary advance.  Only a few more days had I to roam the pine-scented forest.  That ride up this deep gorge was rich in sensation.  Sun and sky and breeze and forest encompassed me.  The wilderness was all about me; and I regretted when the canyon lost its splendid ruggedness, and became like the others I had traversed, and at last grew to be a shallow grassy ravine, with patches of gray aspens along the tiny brook.

As we climbed out once more, this time into an open, beautiful pine forest, with little patches of green thicket, I seemed to have been drugged by the fragrance and the color and the beauty of the wild.  For when Copple called low and sharp:  “Hist!” I stared uncomprehendingly at him.

“Deer!” he whispered, pointing.  “Get off an’ smoke ’em up!”

Something shot through me—­a different kind of thrill.  Ahead in the open I saw gray, graceful, wild forms trotting away.  Like a flash I slid off my horse and jerked out my rifle.  I ran forward a few steps.  The deer had halted—­were gazing at us with heads up and ears high.  What a wild beautiful picture!  As I raised my rifle they seemed to move and vanish in the green.  The hunter in me, roused at last, anathematized my miserable luck.  I ran ahead another few steps, to be halted by Copple.  “Buck!” he called, sharply.  “Hurry!” Then, farther on in the open, out in the sunlight, I saw a noble stag, moving, trotting toward us.  Keen, hard, fierce in my intensity, I aligned the sights upon his breast and fired.  Straight forward and high he bounded, to fall with a heavy thud.

Copple’s horse, startled by my shot, began to snort and plunge.  “Good shot,” yelled Copple.  “He’s our meat.”

What possessed me I knew not, but I ran ahead of Copple.  My eyes searched avidly the bush-dotted ground for my quarry.  The rifle felt hot in my tight grip.  All inside me was a tumult—­eager, keen, wild excitement.  The great pines, the green aisles leading away into the woods, the shadows under the thickets, the pine-pitch tang of the air, the loneliness of that lonely forest—­all these seemed familiar, sweet, beautiful, things mine alone, things seen and smelled and felt before, things ...  Then suddenly I ran right upon my deer, lying motionless, dead I thought.  He appeared fairly large, with three-point antlers.  I heard Copple’s horse thudding the soft earth behind me, and I yelled:  “I got him, Ben.”  That was a moment of exultation.