Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/97

Rh For an instant she stood motionless, presenting a perfect target. It was evident that she had heard the sound of the approaching hunters, but had not as yet located or identified them with her near-sighted eyes. Lennox whirled to find Dan standing very still, peering along the barrel of his rifle. But he didn't shoot. A light danced in his eyes, and his fingers crooked nervously about the trigger, but yet there was no pressure. The deer, seeing Lennox move, leaped into her terror-pace,—that astounding run that is one of the fastest gaits in the whole animal world. In the wink of an eye, she was out of sight.

"Why did n't you shoot?" Lennox demanded.

"Shoot? It was a doe, was n't it?"

"Good Lord, of course it was a doe! But there are no game laws that go back this far. Besides—you aimed at it."

"I aimed just to see if I could catch it through my sights. And I could. My glasses sort of made it blur—but I think—perhaps—that I could have shot it. But I'm not going to kill does. There must be some reason for the game laws, or they would n't exist."

"You 're a funny one. Come three thousand miles to hunt and then pass up the first deer you see. You could almost have been