At this instant there rang through the forest the stamping splash of hoofs in the rapids above him; a moment more and he saw the spray fly back of a boulder.  Then he gazed at something that obliterated all else.

A big buck was coming straight toward him.  He came on, walking briskly, his steel-blue coat wet and glistening, a superb dignity about him, carrying his head and its branching horns with a certain fearless pride, and now that he had struck water, wisely taking his time to gain his second wind.

In a flash the buck saw him, turned broadside and leaped for the clump of nodding hemlocks.

Bang!  Bang! Thayor was shooting now—­shooting as if his life depended upon it.  His first shot went wild, the bullet striking against a rock.  The second sent the buck to his knees; in a second he was up again.  It was the fourth shot that reached home, just as the deer gained the mass of boulders and hemlocks.  The buck sprang convulsively in the air—­the old dog at his throat—­turned a half somersault and fell in a heap, stone dead, in a shallow pool.  With a cry of joy the trapper was beside him.

“By Goll! you done well!” Hite declared with enthusiasm.  “By Goll! friend, you done well!  I knowed you had him soon’s I heard the gun crack.  Thinks I, he ain’t liable to git by ye if he comes in whar I knowed he would.  Well, he’s consider’ble of a deer, I swan!” he declared, running his hand over the branching prongs.

“He’s a beauty!” cried Thayor.

“Yes, sir, and he’ll dress clus to a hundred and seventy.  Must have made him think this perticler section was inhabited when ye was lettin’ drive at him.  Fust shot I know ye shot too quick.  I warn’t mor’n a hundred yards from him, then I knowed ye was gittin’ stiddier when I heard ye shoot again.”

“Hurrah, boys!” shouted a voice from the bank.  It was Holcomb.  “There’s our saddle for Randall,” he cried as he leaped toward them.

“But, Billy, I came pretty near not getting him after all,” exclaimed Thayor with a laugh.  “I was trying to keep your friend in the runway across the brook from shooting me, but I forgot all about him when I heard the deer come crashing down stream.  If he got a crack at him at all I didn’t hear it, I was so excited.  You ought to have told me, Mr. Holt, you had somebody else watching out across the brook, or I might have let drive at him by mistake, or he at me.”  And Thayor laughed heartily.  He was very happy to-day.

The trapper looked at him in wonder.

“Freme warn’t down this way was he, Billy?”

Holcomb shook his head—­a curious expression on his face.

“Oh, it wasn’t Freme,” retorted Thayor.  “This man was half the size of Skinner, and a regular scarecrow.  Looked as if he hadn’t had anything to eat for weeks—­but he could handle a gun all right.  That’s what worried me; I was afraid he would use it on me until the old dog lay down beside him.”