Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/88

70 yards distant. Of course it would have been only child's play to an experienced hunter; but to a tenderfoot it was the difficult mark indeed. Twice out of four shots Dan hit the tree trunk, and one of his two hits was practically a bull's-eye. His two misses were the result of the same mistake he had made before,—attempting to hold his aim too long.

The shots rang far through the quiet woods, long-drawn from the echoes that came rocking back from the hills. In contrast with the deep silence that is really an eternal part of the mountains, the sound seemed preternaturally loud. All over the great sweep of canyon, the wild creatures heard and were startled. One could easily imagine the Columbian deer, gone to their buckbrush to sleep, springing up and lifting pointed ears. There is no more graceful action in the whole animal world than this first, startled spring of a frightened buck. Then old Woof, feeding in the berry bushes, heard the sound too. Woof has considerably more understanding than most of the wild inhabitants of the forest, and maybe that is why he left his banquet and started falling all over his awkward self in descending the hill. It might be that Lennox would want to procure his guest a sample of bear steak; and Woof did n't care to be around to suggest such a