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"There you are," said the Virginian, as the trail proved him right. "Number one has got on. My God, what's that?" At a crashing in the woods very close to us we both flung round and caught sight of a vanishing elk. It left us confronted, smiling a little, and sounding each other with our eyes. "Well, we didn't need him for meat," said the Virginian. "A spike-horn, wasn't it?" said I.
With this advantage the spike-horn bucks are gaining upon the common bucks, and may, in time, entirely supersede them in the Adirondacks. Undoubtedly, the first spike-horn buck was merely an accidental freak of nature. But his spike-horns gave him an advantage, and enabled him to propagate his peculiarity.
"If it's fight you're looking for, you spike-horn stag," announced the boss, bursting through the press to reach the Jo Quacca champion, "we can open a full assortment, and no trouble to show goods." He knocked MacCracken flat, reaching over the heads of the smaller men, and the next moment the Canadians swarmed on the fallen gladiator like flies, lifted him and tossed him into the road.
"The spike-horn differs greatly from the common antler of the C. virginianus. It consists of a single spike, more slender than the antler, and scarcely half so long, projecting forward from the brow, and terminating in a very sharp point. It gives a considerable advantage to its possessor over the common buck.
"Yes, just a spike-horn." For a while now as we rode we kept up a cheerful conversation about elk. We wondered if we should meet many more close to the trail like this; but it was not long before our words died away.
An interesting case has lately been published, from which it appears that the horns of a deer in one district in the United States are now being modified through sexual and natural selection. About fourteen years ago he first heard of SPIKE-HORN BUCKS. These became from year to year more common; about five years ago he shot one, and afterwards another, and now they are frequently killed.
It became an uncanny exhibition of mechanics after a while a sleep-walking sort of thing which wore upon Steve's nerves until he was more than once at the point of taking possession of Joe's repeater. And yet it was Garry who jumped a spike-horn buck, just before nightfall. It was he who fired twice before Steve's rifle reached his shoulder.
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