sighted, aiming at a point just behind the doe's shoulder. Longingly, lovingly his finger caressed the trigger. Into the grim eyes watching from the black oak trunk on the slope behind him leaped a light of exultant joy.
A long stalk was over. Sandy Jim Mayfield's fate was about to overtake him at last.
Two minutes later Sandy Jim Mayfield reared his long, lank form from the pine stump where he had sat so long and so patiently. He was not in a pleasant mood. To gaze along his gun barrel at that doe and refrain from pulling the trigger had imposed upon him a terrible strain. He had been rash, perhaps, in exposing himself to it, but there had been a reason. The ordeal had lasted nearly a full minute, and it had been almost more than the old hunter could stand. Again and again he had all but pressed the trigger. He had been thankful when at last the doe, having recovered somewhat from the excitement of her battle with the lynx, scented him and made off unwillingly into the swamp.
Sandy Jim walked to the broom grass clump and found the fawn. He searched the ground under the edges of the myrtle thicket and discovered what it was that the lynx had been stalking—a wild turkey hen sitting on her eggs gazing up at him with in
