The crash never came; before he could fire he heard a shake and whinny from the mare, and the deer were gone, vanishing instantly, fading like ghosts into the golden jumble of boulders and the gold-tinged olivedrab of the chaparral.

Burns let the hammer down with his thumb; he looked reproachfully down into the arroyo at the mare. “Whisky, old girl,” he murmured, “where’s your hoss sense? You sure let me down this time, you know that?” The mare stared at him, snorted and shook her mane again. “Don’t try to bushwah me,” Burns said. “I heard you.” He looked sadly up the arroyo toward the saddle over which the deer had disappeared. He decided that he might as well go up there and have a look, however; the deer might not have been badly frightened—besides they were apparently in search of water, which meant that they would not run far. And he needed meat; if he did not get it now he would have to get it tomorrow.

He got to his feet, brushed the sand and ants from his shirt and looked around again. He saw nothing which should have frightened the deer, and concluded that they must have been startled by Whisky giving a sudden jerk on the picket rope. He pushed his saddle and the gear fastened to it hard up against the overhanging wall of the boulder, then went down into the arroyo to check the stake and rope. He drove the stake in a little farther with his bootheel, had himself a quick drink at the spring and started up the arroyo with the carbine cradled in his left arm. Pulling himself up over the ledges and shelves of rock that made the arroyo something like a stairway for giants, he was annoyed by the scraping and clashing of his spurs and knelt down to take them off. He left them there on the bare rock, in a place which he felt sure he could find again, and went on up.

After climbing over a stratum of compressed shale near the head and at one side of the arroyo, he found himself among the runty trees where he had seen the deer. Now he proceeded more slowly and carefully, and as he approached the crest of the saddle went down on his hands and knees and crawled the last few feet to the top. There he halted. Below him was the mouth of the canyon, to his right the canyon itself going steeply up, shelf after shelf, toward the main bulk of the mountain, and across from him on the opposite slope, moving slowly upward among the rock and brush, were the three deer. As he had expected, they had not gone far. But they were well out of range, and moving away. He decided to follow and stalk them.

He tested the wind, such as it was, and found it favoring neither him nor his quarry but drifting up the canyon between them. He advanced over the saddle, crouching under the limbs of juniper and pin oak, and moved down onto the slope below, where the growth was denser, this being the northern snow-holding side of the ridge. He did not go very far down but stayed on the slope, moving quietly but swiftly among the small grubby trees in a direction paralleling the progress of the deer.