Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/262

 were in velvet and were as yet scarcely half their full size, but the old woodsman knew that buck as well as he knew his own sons. Head held high, white flag jerking from side to side, the splendid stag bounded along the narrow bank, racing at full speed, yet appearing singularly deliberate and unconcerned, his dun body rising and falling with exquisite grace as he floated over the tall rushes and the low treacherous tangles of vine. He did not see the great gator lying in his path until he was almost upon the saurian and he had no time to prepare for the leap. Yet without hesitation, and apparently without extra effort, he soared with birdlike buoyancy more than twenty feet and, landing lightly and airily as though the leap were nothing, bounded on without a backward glance along the dike and into the cover of the screening myrtles beyond.

Mayfield, crouching in his punt, swore delightedly. Once, on the reed-grown causeway, the flat-horned buck had saved the king of the river. Now, by a strange trick of fate, the king of the river was squaring that account. The dogs had crossed the break and were coming in full cry. If nothing stopped them, in another five minutes they would bring the buck to bay at the dike's lower end where he must turn and face them or else drown miserably in the dense mat of floating water growths. But