Oscar watched the fawn as long as it remained in sight; and was glad to see that the injuries it had inflicted upon itself did not in the least interfere with its running. When it disappeared from his view, he mounted his horse and turned about, to find the lieutenant sitting motionless in his saddle and looking at him with every expression of astonishment.
“What did you do that for?” he asked, as Oscar came up. “That wasn’t a very bright trick.”
“I couldn’t help it,” was the reply. “He cried so, and seemed to be in such misery.”
“Well, you beat anybody I ever heard of!” exclaimed the young officer, who could scarcely believe his ears. “You come out here on purpose to hunt game, and when you secure as fine a specimen as one can find in a year’s 150shooting, you must up and let it go because it cries!”
The lieutenant shouted out the last word at the top of his voice, and clapped his hands, and waved himself back and forth in the saddle, and laughed until Oscar was obliged to laugh too.
“That’s the way they all do,” continued the officer, as soon as he could speak. “You’ll have to get used to it.”
“I can’t, and I’ll not try,” was the emphatic rejoinder. “I’ll never chase another antelope on horseback, unless I am in danger of going hungry. Why, his forelegs were all cut to pieces!”
“That’s another thing they always do when they begin to get tired and are hard pressed. It is because they don’t pick up their forefeet fast enough to keep them out of the way of the hind ones. Well, we have seen all we shall see of this drive, and we’d better go back and find the others. The colonel will want to try the speed of his dogs now. You’ll not mind looking at a pretty race, I suppose?”
151“I shall take no part in it,” answered Oscar. “If the colonel wants more antelope, why doesn’t he shoot them and be done with it?”
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders as if to say that what the colonel did was something he could not answer for, and after that the two rode in silence, the officer now and then turning in his saddle to gaze in the direction in which the fawn had disappeared, and acting altogether as if he had half a mind to turn about and resume the pursuit on his own responsibility.
He believed in making as large a bag as he could when he went hunting, and the loss of the fawn troubled him not a little.
Oscar had almost decided to let the other captive go free also; but, when he reached the place where it had been left, he found that it was but slightly injured, not having been so long and perseveringly pushed as its mate; so he decided to keep it if he could, and take it back to the States with him.
Sam Hynes would go into ecstasies over a gift like that, and, as for his handsome sister, 152she—that is—well, he would take it home with him, anyhow.
Having made his lasso fast around the fawn’s fore shoulders, Oscar, with the lieutenant’s assistance, untied its legs and allowed it to spring to its feet.
It “bucked” beautifully for a while, and made the most desperate efforts to escape; but at last it became exhausted by its useless struggling and permitted its captor to lead it back to the place where the doe had been brought down by the shot from Oscar’s revolver.
She proved to be a very fine specimen, and the lieutenant, who had been in at the death of more than one antelope during the time he had been on the plains, assured the lucky hunter that he would see but few larger.
While they were examining their prize the colonel and the rest of the party appeared on the plateau; and, after looking at the boys through their field-glasses, one of them separated himself from his companions and began riding his horse in a circle at a full gallop.
“What is he doing that for?” asked Oscar, 153when he saw the lieutenant laugh and swing his hat about his head.
“I suppose he wants us to go there,” was the reply; “but he is giving the wrong signal. He is riding ‘Danger! get together at once.’ The first time I saw that signal, I tell you it made my hair stand right up on end. I was out on a scout with a small party, when one of our lookouts, who was so far away from us that we could hardly see him with the naked eye, began riding in a circle; and, by the time we were ready for action, we had ten times our number of Indians down with us. We can communicate with one another with our horses and our hands as easily as we could with signal-flags. If two or more columns of troops are marching through the same country out of sight of each other they raise smokes.”
The lieutenant went on to explain the different signals that were in vogue among the soldiers; and, by the time he had succeeded in making Oscar understand them, they reached the plateau where the colonel’s party was engaged in picking up the antelope that had fallen to their revolvers, and putting them 154into the wagon, which the teamster had brought up in obedience to a signal from his commander.
The officers were loud in their praises of Oscar’s skill, he having been the only one who was fortunate enough to capture any of the fawns alive, and they were both surprised and amused when they learned that one of his captives had been set at liberty “because it cried.”
Leaving the teamster and the Indian to pick up the rest of the game and to care for the captive fawn, the party............