Part 2 (2/2)
The doe went on She left the sawht; she turned into a wood-path As she approached Slide Brook, she saw a boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle The dogs were not in sight; but she could hear the down the hill There was no time for hesitation With a tremendous burst of speed she cleared the strea” of a rifle bullet in the air above her The cruel sound gave wings to the poor thing In a : she leaped into the traveled road Which way? Below her in the as a load of hay: atowards her She turned south, and flew along the street The toas up Women and children ran to the doors and s;boarding-houses, the su to do, came out and cheered; a ca at adeer, and popped away at her; but they were accustomed to a mark that stood still
It was all so sudden! There were twenty people ere just going to shoot her; when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away across a auntlet to run But nobody except the deer considered it in that light Everybody told what he was just going to do; everybody who had seen the performance was a kind of hero,--everybody except the deer For days and days it was the subject of conversation; and the su another deer would cooing noer, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened half to death Nothing is so appalling to a recluse as half a mile of summer boarders As the deer entered the thin woods, she saw a rabble of people start across the , and lolling out their tongues, ca the trail, like stupids, and consequently losing ground when the deer doubled But, when the doe had got into the ti across the h, perhaps, to say that nobody offered to shoot the dogs)
The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone: she was gah-bred ears But the fearful pace at which she had just been going told on her Her legs trembled, and her heart beat like a trip-hammer She slowed her speed perforce, but still fled industriously up the right bank of the streas were evidently gaining again, she crossed the broad, deep brook, climbed the steep left bank, and fled on in the direction of the Mount-Marcy trail The fording of the river threw the hounds off for a ti up and down the opposite bank, that she had a little respite: she used it, however, to push on until the baying was faint in her ears; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the ground
This rest, brief as it was, saved her life Roused again by the baying pack, she leaped forith better speed, though without that keen feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in theIt was still a race for life; but the odds were in her--favor, she thought She did not appreciate the dogged persistence of the hounds, nor had any inspiration told her that the race is not to the swift
She was a little confused in her o; but an instinct kept her course to the left, and consequently farther away fro noer, and now faster, as the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, she kept to the southwest, crossed the streaht, and ran on by Haystack and Skylight in the direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond I do not know her exact course through this htful wildernesses I only know that the poor thing worked her way along painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady li down ”dead beat”
at intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the reered down the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake If she could put that piece of water between her and her pursuers, she would be safe Had she strength to swiht that sent her back with a bound There was a boat : the other had a gun in his hand They were looking towards her: they had seen her (She did not know that they had heard the baying of hounds on thein wait for her an hour) What should she do? The hounds were drawing near No escape that way, even if she could still run With only a ed into the lake, and struck obliquely across Her tired legs could not propel the tired body rapidly She saw the boat headed for her She turned toward the centre of the lake The boat turned She could hear the rattle of the oarlocks It was gaining on her Then there was a silence Then there was a splash of the water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round the lake, the words ”Confound it all!” and a rattle of the oars again The doe saw the boat nearing her She turned irresolutely to the shore whence she ca there She turned again to the center of the lake
The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now In a moment more, with a rush of water, the boat was on her, and the ht her by the tail
”Knock her on the head with that paddle!” he shouted to the gentleentleht have been a ospel He took the paddle in his hand Just then the doe turned her head, and looked at hi eyes
”I can't do it! my soul, I can't do it!” and he dropped the paddle ”Oh, let her go!”
”Let H go!” was the only response of the guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out his hunting-knife, and entleht of the venison
The buck returned about the ry and lonesome The buck was surprised He looked about in the forest He took a circuit, and came back His doe was nowhere to be seen He looked down at the fawn in a helpless sort of way The fawn appealed for his supper The buck had nothing whatever to give his child,--nothing but his sy, this is what he said: ”I'm the head of this fa whatever for you I don't knohat to do I've the feelings of a father; but you can't live on them Let us travel”
The buck walked away: the little one toddled after him They disappeared in the forest
V A CHARACTER STUDY
There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval man Wanted, a man ould satisfy the conditions of the h for an ancestor We are not particular about our ancestors, if they are sufficiently re to apprehend the priht the prie races He is, at best, only a rowth of the recent period (caeneral raft of mammalian fauna); but he possesses yet soood mental exercise to try to fix the mind on the primitive man divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his struggles with the other e, the ordinary occupation of theit) odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then let the e The experiment is perfectly successful; only, at the end of it, you haven't any mind Better still, consider the telephone: take away fronetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then let the mind run abroad on the telephone
The mind won't coet a conception of the priic spaces, and so across the terrace epoch of the quaternary period
But this is an unsatisfying pleasure The best results are obtained by studying the primitive man as he is left here and there in our era, a witness of what has been; and I find hiists call the Champlain epoch I suppose the primitive man is one es more to nature than to the forces of civilization What we seek in hiinal traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, and unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture He would retain the primitive instincts, which are cultivated out of the ordinary, commonplace man
I should expect to find hi a special co its aries He would be a kind of test to us of e have lost by our gregarious acquisitions
On the one hand, there would be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts (which the fox and the beaver still possess), the ability to find one's way in the pathless forest, to follow a trail, to circumvent the wild denizens of the woods; and, on the other hand, there would be the philosophy of life which the priinal observation and cogitation It is our good fortune to know such a man; but it is difficult to present hirated froe, nearly half a century ago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in the wilds of the Adirondacks Sometimes it is a love of adventure and freedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into the less; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leads them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and the society of bears to town s and taxes I think that Old Mountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the pri intent as to the wilderness into which he plunged Why should he want to slash away the forest and plow up the ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter to roa and listen to the chatter of birds and the stir of beasts? Are there not trout in the streaar in the maples, honey in the hollow trees, fur on the sables, war and scratching in the ”open” yield potatoes and rye? And, if there is steadier diet needed than venison and bear, is the pig an expensive animal? If Old Phelps bowed to the prejudice or fashi+on of his age (since we have cos), and reared a fa, planted about it soroup of fla sunflowers by the door, I am convinced that it was a concession that did not touch his radical character; that is to say, it did not impair his reluctance to split oven-wood
He was a true citizen of the wilderness Thoreau would have liked him, as he liked Indians and woodchucks, and the smell of pine forests; and, if Old Phelps had seen Thoreau, he would probably have said to him, ”Why on airth, Mr Thoreau, don't you live accordin' to your preachin'?”
You iven nahty hunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his veins Nothing could be farther frorisly sound of Orson expresses only his entire affinity with the untaentle passion for the freedom and wildness of the forest Orson Phelps has only those unconventional and humorous qualities of the bear which make the animal so beloved in literature; and one does not think of Old Phelps soof the period,--as a part of nature itself
His appearance at the tian to come into public notice fostered this is, clad in a woolen shi+rt and butternut-colored trousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head surht-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like so and tangled,entered by a comb