"Milt, it's me lookin' over this gun. How can you stand there an' tell me I'm goin' to shoot high? I had a dead bead on him."
"Roy, you didn't allow for downhill... Hurry. He sees us now."
Roy leveled the rifle and, taking aim as before, he fired. The buck stood perfectly motionless, as if he had indeed been stone. The does, however, jumped with a start, and gazed in fright in every direction.
"Told you! I seen where your bullet hit thet pine--half a foot over his shoulder. Try again an' aim at his legs."
Roy now took a quicker aim and pulled trigger. A puff of dust right at the feet of the buck showed where Roy's lead had struck this time. With a single bound, wonderful to see, the big deer was out of sight behind trees and brush. The does leaped after him.
"Doggone the luck!" ejaculated Roy, red in the face, as he worked the lever of his rifle. "Never could shoot downhill, nohow!"
His rueful apology to the girls for missing brought a merry laugh from Bo.
"Not for worlds would I have had you kill that beautiful deer!" she exclaimed.
"We won't have venison steak off him, that's certain," remarked Dale, dryly. "An' maybe none off any deer, if Roy does the shootin'."
They resumed travel, sheering off to the right and keeping to the edge of the intersecting canuon. At length they rode down to the bottom, where a tiny brook babbled through willows, and they followed this for a mile or so down to where it flowed into the larger stream. A dim trail overgrown with grass showed at this point.
"Here's where we part," said Dale. "You'll beat me into my camp, but I'll get there sometime after dark."
"Hey, Milt, I forgot about thet darned pet cougar of yours an' the rest of your menagerie. Reckon they won't scare the girls? Especially old Tom?"
"You won't see Tom till I get home," replied Dale.
"Ain't he corralled or tied up?"
"No. He has the run of the place."
"Wal, good-by, then, an' rustle along."
Dale nodded to the girls, and, turning his horse, he drove the pack-train before him up the open space between the stream and the wooded slope.
Roy stepped off his horse with that single action which appeared such a feat to Helen.
"Guess I'd better cinch up," he said, as he threw a stirrup up over the pommel of his saddle. "You girls are goin' to see wild country."