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"It was a rifle-shot," he discriminated. "A still-hunter, probably. The deer come down from the coverts toward evening to drink. Some rock may have fallen along the river-bank, dislodged by the concussion." A sense of melancholy was in the air, gathering with the gathering darkness. The light was fading out of the west, and the early autumnal dusk was at hand.
Those woods are not the best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek with a man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded slopes from which he can look back to see if anyone is following him. Even the glades and the open cranberry swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere there is cover for the still-hunter.
He whirled, looked, drew his six-gun and began firing at the man who stood in plain sight just where he had stepped into the Cup from the mouth of a little blind cut where the stream went out in noise and lost itself. This was a big man, sinister and cold and dark, a half-breed Pomo of Courtrey's gang, a still-hunter who did a lot of the dirty work which the others refused.
If he attempted to show himself long enough to convince the old man that he was human he would only be inviting the bullet. Until his blurring senses left him he occasionally shouted or thrust up his head; but the old still-hunter was relentless, and evidently had not the clear vision of a youth. He was always ready with a shot.
In such cases the still-hunter is stirring by the earliest dawn, and walks with stealthy speed to some high point of observation from which he can overlook the feeding-grounds where he has previously discovered sign.
When he came in to be paid, I described the stranger of the morning; and as I knew that he was familiar with every one in the neighbourhood, I asked if he knew him. "No one should know him better than myself," he said; "'tis old Brian B , the still-hunter, and a near neighbour of your'n. A sour, morose, queer chap he is, and as mad as a March hare!
That still-hunter is in luck who in the fall finds an accessible berry-covered hillside which is haunted by bears; but, as a rule, the berry bushes do not grow close enough together to give the hunter much chance. Like most other wild animals, bears which have known the neighborhood of man are beasts of the darkness, or at least of the dusk and the gloaming.
The usual practice of the still-hunter who is after grisly is to toll it to baits. The hunter either lies in ambush near the carcass, or approaches it stealthily when he thinks the bear is at its meal.
They may be hunted effectively only with the most extreme caution. Not one person in a thousand ever attains to the level of a still-hunter whose accomplishment guarantees him success under such conditions. There are men of this sort, but these are artists in their pursuit, whose attainments, like those of the professional generally, are beyond comparison with those of the ordinary amateur.
This startled the trio like the bursting of a bomb, and trebled their excitement; for their guide, when abroad, had usually the cautious, well-controlled manner of the still-hunter, who never knows what chances may be lurking round him which he would ruin by an outcry. "Quit laughing, boys," he said, recovering prudence directly he had let out his yell.
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