In truth, if this were a narrative of Ira Hasbrook’s adventures, it might be thought lively reading of the dime novel variety. He had not, as he had confided to Westy, limited his killing exploits to swatting flies. He was one of those universal characters who have a way of drifting finally to farms. And he had not abridged his tales of sprightly adventure in imparting them to Westy. He had been to sea on a New Bedford whaler. He had shot big game in the Rockies. He had lived on a ranch. His star performance had been a liberal participation in the kidnapping of a despotic king in a small South Sea island.
Naturally, so lively an adventurer had nothing but contempt for a pasteboard target. And though he did not wilfully undertake to alienate Westy from his code of conduct, he had so continually represented to him the thrilling glories of the chase, that Aunt Mira had very naturally suffered some haunting apprehensions that her nephew might depart impulsively on some piratical cruise or Indian killing enterprise.
These vague fears had simmered down at the last to the ludicrous dread that her departing nephew (whom she had come to know and love) might, under the inspiration of the satanic Ira, celebrate his departure from the country by laying low some innocent cow in attempting to “drop” an undesirable woodchuck. She had come to have a very horror of the word drop which occurred so frequently in Ira’s tales of adventure....
But Aunt Mira’s fears were needless. Westy had been Ira’s companion without being his disciple. In his quiet way he had understood Ira thoroughly, the same as in his quiet way he understood Roy Blakeley and Pee-wee Harris thoroughly. The cows, even the woodchucks, were safe. The shot which turned the tide of Westy Martin’s life was not out of his own precious rifle.
He had not taken many steps after hearing the shot when he came upon the effect of it. A small deer lay a few feet off the trail. The beautiful creature was quite motionless and though it lay prone on its side with the head flat upon the ground, its gracefulness was apparent, even striking. It lay in a sort of bower of low hanging foliage and had a certain harmony with the forest which even its stricken state and somewhat unnatural attitude could not destroy.
As Westy first glimpsed this silent, uncomplaining victim, a feeling (which could hardly be called a thought) came to him. It was just this, that the cruelty which had wrought this piteous spectacle was doubly cruel for that the creature had been laid low in its own home. The friendly, enveloping foliage revealed this helpless denizen of the woods as a sorrowing mother might show her dead child to a sympathizing friend. Such thoughts did not take form in the mind of the tremulous boy but he had some such feeling. He was thoughtful enough, even at the moment, to wonder how he could have taken such delight in stories of wholesale killings. One sight of the actual thing aroused his anger and pity.
He approached a little nearer, this scout with a rifle over his shoulder, and beheld something which startled, almost unnerved him. He could see only one of the eyes, for the deer lay on its side, but this eye was soft and seemed not unfriendly; it was not a startled eye. The beautiful animal was not dead. He did not know how much it might be suffering, but at all events its suffering was not over, and there was a kind of resignation in the soft look of that single eye; just a kind of silent acceptance of its plight which went to the boy’s heart.
Who had done this thing, against the good law of the state, and in disregard of every humane obligation? Who had fled leaving this beautiful inhabitant of the quiet woods in agony? The leaves stirred gently above it in the soothing breeze. A gay little bird chirped a melody in the overhanging branches as if to beguile it in its suffering. And the soft, gentle eye seemed full of an infinite patience as it looked at Westy.
He was face to face with one of the sporting exploits of that horrible toy, the rifle. For just a moment it seemed as if the stricken deer were looking at his own rifle as if in quiet curiosity. Then he noticed a tiny wound and a little trickle of blood on the creature’s side. It made a striking contrast, the crimson and the dull gray....