"Yes, and we found out," Joe added.
CHAPTER XXV--Protecting the Deer Yards--The Scouts Wait in the Moonlight and Bag a Mountain Lion
That storm lasted two days, and it brought the snow to the valley, laid at least sixteen inches of it on the level in the woods, and swept it across Lake McDermott against the hotel, till the drift reached the top of the first story. As soon as it stopped, the scouts and Mills were out on their snow-shoes, tracking through the woods.
"I want to find out where the deer yards are going to be this winter,"
the Ranger said. "We"ll want to know, so we can keep an eye on them, for lions or wolves, and protect the herds if we can."
"What"s a deer yard?" the boys asked.
"Big game, especially in winter, don"t travel very much," the Ranger answered. "They pick out some place where the feeding is good, and learn to know it well, not only where to get food, but where to turn quick and hide from enemies. When winter and deep snow come, they begin packing down the snow with their hoofs in a sort of yard--moose, deer, and sometimes even sheep do this--and as the snow grows deeper, their packing raises them higher and higher up, so they can feed on taller and taller bushes, and even finally get up to the limbs of trees."
Mills decided that the protected southwestern slopes of the mountain along which the trail winds to Iceberg Lake was a likely field, so the party split up, and each one went his own way through the woods and across the open parks, looking for tracks, and following any that he discovered. They were to meet at one o"clock on the sh.o.r.e of the lake.
Joe was soon out of sight and sound of the others, and as he was lowest down, close to the brook at the bottom of the canon, he was also in the thickest woods, where the fir-trees, covered with snow like Christmas cards, shook their "frosty pepper" into his nose as he pushed through.
The brook was partially frozen, and he often found it easiest to walk on the snowy edge. Presently he came on deer tracks leading into the open water, and not emerging. The deer had walked up-stream, in the water, evidently--several of them, and recently. He hurried on, beside the brook, and suddenly, rounding a little cover of pines, came full on a herd of five, walking in the water. He had not heard them, because of the gurgle of the brook, nor they him. He stopped dead in his tracks and watched them a second, before they got his scent, or in some other way detected him, and turned to look. He did not quite know what to do, but the deer quickly decided. They stepped out of the brook and into the woods, as if to let him pa.s.s. He went on, and looked back. The deer had walked into the brook again, and were slowly coming on, browsing on overhanging shrubs as they came.
So Joe moved some distance from the bank, and then followed them. After half a mile, they left the stream and entered a thick, small wood where, just outside, was long, dried gra.s.s under the snow. He saw that they had been here before, pawing away the snow to eat this hay. He followed into the wood, stampeding them out on the farther side, and found already the signs that they had begun to stamp down paths through their "yard."
Walking around the grove, he looked for tracks of coyotes or lions, but there was nothing but the track of a snow-shoe rabbit. The deer, so far, were safe. Indeed, they even now stood about three hundred yards away, watching him with alert curiosity, their heads raised, a pretty picture over the white snow.
He carefully took note of the spot, and hurried on to report. Tom and the Ranger reached the lake about the time he did. The Ranger had found a yard, also, and Tom had found a mink track, and seen a snow-shoe rabbit, in his white winter dress.
They built a fire on the snow, beside the white snow-field which was the lake (the water was now frozen solid), and as they made their tea, they watched a herd of goats low down on the cliff that Tom had climbed, evidently quite content up there, on the ledges too steep for snow to cling, and finding something to eat.
"It must be dry picking," Tom declared. "Why, there was little enough in summer."
"And no tin cans," Joe laughed. "You might have left "em a few tin cans, Tom, when you climbed the wall."
"Never thought of it," Tom answered, "and now it"s too slippery."
From then on it became the scouts" almost daily task--or, rather, pleasure--to visit the deer yards to see how the herds were getting on.
There were five deer in one yard, and eleven in the other, and before long they got so used to the boys that if they happened to be "at home,"
as Joe put it, they would hardly go a hundred yards away while the scouts inspected their methods of feeding, looked for enemy tracks, and sometimes left bundles of hay on the tramped snow--hay which Joe had discovered he could dig out in a sheltered spot near the chalets. It wasn"t much, but it served to make the deer tamer.
Often, now, the scouts came on their skis, for two more storms had put three feet of snow on the ground, and it elevated them above the underbrush. The run home was thrilling, with long, fast slides down open parks and hard, Telemark stems at the bottom to keep from crashing into trees or rocks. But they couldn"t get the Ranger on skis.
"No, sir!" he said. "You boys know how, and can keep from breaking your necks. But I"m too old to learn."
It was the day after Thanksgiving, when Joe, true to his word, had killed a hen and cooked the nearest thing he could to a real New England Thanksgiving dinner, that he and Tom, visiting the first of their yards early in the morning, came upon a tragedy.
There were no deer in sight as they approached, and on entering the packed path under the trees they heard no sounds. Pushing on, they came suddenly upon all five beautiful creatures, lying dead on the snow!
There was blood on the snow, too, and one or two bodies had been somewhat eaten. But three of them had merely been killed wantonly, and not eaten at all.
The boys were furious. They c.o.c.ked their rifles, and began a rapid, angry search for tracks. Yes--there they were--big, catlike paw tracks!
The lion had crouched in the evergreens, sneaked up in the night when the herd were huddled close for mutual warmth, and laid them all low!
They circled the grove till they found the tracks leading away, and followed them as fast as they could. But, being on skis, they were soon baffled, as the lion had made at once for the steep, rocky cliffs. So they rushed to the other yard. Here the herd had not been disturbed.
They were all browsing on a new path they had packed among some willows.
"Come," Joe cried. "Back to see Mills and find out what to do! The old lion may get the other herd to-night."
That night there was a moon, and the Ranger and the boys, clad in all their thickest clothes, with four pairs of woollen socks in their big, easy moccasins, with sweaters, fur coats, fleece-lined mittens and bearskin helmets, advanced on snow-shoes up the valley.
"The lion may come back to the carcases, or wolves may scent "em and come," Mills said, "or he may attack the other herd. Then, again, he may do nothing, and we"ll have to watch every night for a week. You two take the dead herd, and I"ll watch the other. Approach it up wind--don"t get on the windward side at all, and if you can find a good rest in a tree, get up in that, with a clear view of the opening. Let the lion get in close before you fire, and let him have it in the heart and head. There ought to be light enough to-night. Better have your guns in rest, pointed at the carcases, so you won"t have to make any noise lifting "em."
The Ranger and the scouts now separated, and Joe and Tom, making a wide circle to get sharp to leeward of the yard, moved silently over the deep snow, in the cold, clear, almost Arctic moonlight, with the great peaks of the Divide rising up like silvery ghosts far overhead. There was no noise in all the world, and no living thing except themselves, except once when a startled snow-shoe rabbit leaped across an opening, white as the snow he was half wallowing in.
"Say, this is spooky!" Joe whispered.
"You bet," Tom whispered back. "The little old electric lights in Southmead Main Street are some way off!"
They drew near the wood where the yard was, and crept stealthily into the dark shadows of the pines. The dead deer lay in a tiny opening, five black objects on the moonlit snow. The boys, still keeping down wind, each picked out a tree, and with their rifles carefully locked, climbed up through the scratching, snowy branches till they could work into some kind of a seat, and get their guns pointed out, with an opening along the barrel to sight.
"Say, I hope the old lion don"t take too long," Tom whispered. "My seat"s about two inches wide, and sharp on top."
"Gosh, I"d sit on a needle all night to save those other deer," Joe answered. "But don"t talk. He may be coming any minute."
In cold and silence, they waited. There wasn"t a sound, except now and then a m.u.f.fled groan or creak of a tree limb, as one or the other of the boys had to shift his position. It grew later and later. Joe"s eyes ached with watching the five black objects on the snow, and the patch of white moonlight around them. They ached, and would close. He was bitterly cold, too. He did not know whether he would be able to pull the trigger if the lion came, or pry his lids wide enough apart to see the sights. Every time he tried to sight the gun now, it was just a blur of shining blackness. And he knew Tom must be feeling the same way. Mills certainly had not fired at anything--they could have heard a rifle shot for ten miles in that deadly still Arctic hush.
Then, so suddenly it almost made him fall off his branch, something dark and long and lean came sneaking into the patch of moonlight. It was the lion, its paws sinking down, its body crouched over them, till it seemed to creep like a snake. In this ghostly light, it looked about ten feet long, and Joe suddenly felt hot blood go through his half-frozen veins.
The lion gave a low, angry snarl, and stopped dead about three feet from the body of a deer, raising its head a little. Evidently it had heard Joe or Tom moving his rifle barrel to sight. But he had no time to retreat. Almost as one shot, the two guns blazed, with two flashes of red out of the evergreens, and a report that seemed to shatter the cold night silence.
The dark form of the lion gave a leap into the air, and landed kicking in the snow.
At the same instant two figures literally fell out of the trees, and rushed toward it, going in up to their waists, for neither waited to put on his snow-shoes again.
Tom was the first near it.
"Look out!" Joe yelled. "He"s not dead! He may come at you!"
But Tom had his gun up, and at pointblank range, with his sights in full moonlight, he deliberately took aim, and fired again, at the lion"s heart.
The body gave a last kick, and fell on its side, stone dead, its blood slowly running out on the snow.
"_He"ll_ never kill any more deer!" Tom cried.
They turned the lion over, and examined it. One bullet had hit him in the front leg, one in the jaw, shattering it, and entering its throat.
But which shot was whose, n.o.body could say.
"I guess it was yours that got his head," Tom declared, ""cause I was so sleepy I couldn"t see to sight."
"My hands were so cold, I almost couldn"t pull the trigger, so it must have been yours," Joe answered.