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In half an hour or less the deer came trotting back towards their former feeding-ground, and we all three fired; Uncle Jeff knocked over a buck, and we killed a doe. It took us some time to cut them up, and it was nearly dark before we reached the spot where I had shot the panther.
"Yes, after the big Kill to-morrow," sighed the Bull mournfully, "I shall want to trail somewhere. Across Kootenay River is good feeding-ground, but there the accursed Long Knives are filled with the very devil of destruction, and kill even such as I am, though my hide is not worth the lifting. I, who am an Outcast, and have lost all pride, know this I am worthless."
Now and then a night-bird called from a thicket, as if asking what interloper came into these solitudes; or a scared jack-rabbit scampered away from his feeding-ground, as the steps of the horse tore through the underbrush. Even the old sorrel seemed to gaze reproachfully at the lad, who had dismounted, and now led the animal through the wild and tangled undergrowths.
The season was so late that it had lost most of its verdancy, but there was an abundance of nutriment in the blades and it was splendid feeding-ground one of those breaks in the almost limitless forest of which grazing animals were sure to take advantage.
As with the town-lot, the house sometimes was a gift outright to the clergyman, and ofttimes the ownership was retained by the church, and the free use only was given to each minister. It was a universal custom to allow free pasturage for the minister's horse, for which the village burial-ground was assigned as a favorite feeding-ground. Sometimes this privilege of free pasturage was abused.
Twenty or thirty may be peering about in a bloodwood, and with a unanimous impulse and a call in unison they slip through the forest, and shoot into the jungle, flashing sun-glints. Eager, alert, always under high pressure, the business of the moment brooks of no delay. The flocks come and go between the home and the feeding-ground with noisy exclamations and impetuous haste.
There is not a tree on it, and it is all good feeding-ground. What I intend to do is to enclose it with the spruce-fir posts and rails that we are about to cut down, and then set a hedge upon a low bank which I shall raise all round inside the rails.
At length, just over a shallow, spacious, grassy mere, and some thirty feet above its surface, the leader decided to alight. It was an old and favoured feeding-ground, where the mud was full of tender shoots and tiny creatures of the ooze. The wings of the flock, as if on signal, turned out and upward, showing a flash of paler colour as they checked the still considerable speed of the flight.
Now it was March, and the hillsides were ablaze with the poppies, and the valley floor was soft green and yellow to the knees; with the great live oaks standing grouped in stately calm, like a herd of gigantic, green elephants scattered over their feeding-ground and finding the peace of repletion with the coming of the sun.
Presently the yearling rushed them out again, then sidled down, venturing to the edge of the feeding-ground, where he began to crunch acorns again with a cautious eye on the sow and her noisy brood.
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