right hindquarter was streaming blood and the pain of it burnt like fire.
That pain took the heart out of him. The doe was circling him again, dancing around him in that odd, mincing, stiff-legged way, head high, ears flattened, tail erect. He saw her muscles tighten, knew that another attack was coming. With one last savage snarl, he sprang six feet to the left and vanished in the myrtle thicket.
Immediately the doe turned, walked to the broom grass clump, and stood with lowered head, caressing her fawn. The large eyes that had watched from the broom grass were no longer urgently, anxiously expectant. They were calm and happy now. The event for which they had been waiting had come at last. The absent mother had returned to her little one.
Mayfield could not see the fawn from where he sat, but minutes ago he had learned from the doe's actions that the little creature was there in the broom grass, that it had been lying there unknown to him all the long afternoon awaiting its mother's return from the swamp where she had gone to graze. There was no sentiment in Sandy Jim. He had killed scores of deer, in season and out. He could kill this one without a twinge of conscience.
He raised the gun slowly. Deliberately he
