“The beast is surely charmed! I’ve shot him, and yet he does not stir!”
Suddenly the shining black antlers sank low. The whole head of the caribou disappeared in the brush. Still his body remained erect.
The girl, as if in fear of losing the prize, started forward.
“It’s all right,” said Johnny. “He’s yours. I missed him fair enough.”
“You—you missed?” The girl’s tone showed surprise.
“Mystery solved!” he shouted back a moment later. “When he made that last leap he landed so squarely on the tops of a half dozen young fir trees that they did what his legs no longer could. They supported him.
“But say!” he called. “It’s queer. Come here, please.”
As the girl advanced he had time for a brief study of her fine, strong, khaki clad figure.
“Eighteen or twenty. English or Scotch. An outdoor girl,” was his mental comment.
“Question is,” he smiled as the girl came close, “Who’s caribou is it? Three arrows, all quite near the heart. Two are yours, one mine.”
“You—yours?” The puzzled look of a moment before returned to the girl’s face.
“Yes. I shot first. You did not see me. But there’s my arrow.
“But really,” his tone changed as the girl seemed suddenly crestfallen, “there’s no need of mine and thine in the forest. I am glad as I can be to know that there’s a fellow creature near. That was my last arrow.”
“I am, a little. Haven’t really eaten for—well, for some time. Luck went against me. Couldn’t even get a fish.”
“We’ll take the caribou to camp,” she said. “It’s only a half mile, all down grade. Grandfather—”
She broke off quite suddenly as one does who has found himself in danger of saying too much.
“You—you have a camp of your own—” she hesitated, “perhaps—” Again she paused.
As Johnny watched, he read in her face signs of conflicting emotions. Native hospitality, a longing for companionship, youth calling to youth, were battling with fear. This much he understood. But why the fear? She had spoken of a grandfather. Surely then there could be no objection to his joining them in a feast off the venison they had secured.
“Perhaps,” she began again. “Here,” extending her quiver filled with arrows, “take these. We have others.”
“I’ll dress the deer and we’ll divide it,” said Johnny, exasperated by what seemed to him cool effrontery. He did not so much as look at the proffered arrows.