The deer stood and gazed at me for a moment then slowly walked off. The deer had gone some distance before I could control myself sufficiently to shoot. The buck had followed the trail of the doe up to the fallen tree and had caught me skinning her and it angered him. Instead of running off he was determined to attack me and the only thing that saved me from being severely hurt was my straightening up just at the right time to miss the thrust of the buck and the deer's missing me was what caused him to leave me. This was the worst case of buck fever that I have ever had and I do not care to ever experience a case of that kind again. CHAPTER XXIII. Partner a Necessity. As I promised to give some reasons why a partner is necessary, and as I have trapped many seasons both with and without a partner, I should know something about the subject. A writer, some time ago, in Hunter-Trader-Trapper said that it took some trappers fifty years to learn what others learned in a week. Now, I fully agree with this writer, for it only took me about three seconds to learn that a partner was necessary, and it came about in this way. I had several bear traps set near what is known as the Hogsback on the old Jersey Turnpike Road in Pennsylvania. The traps were strung along the ridge that divides the waters of the East Fork and the West Fork, which are tributaries of the west branch of the Susquehanna River and were setting from one and a half miles to four miles of the wagon road, and about nine miles from any house. The time in question was the last days of October or the first of November, and the day a very warm one for that time of the year. I had been walking very fast, in fact where the ground was favorable, I would take a dog trot. I wished to make the rounds of the traps and get out of the woods that day. When I came to where the second trap had been set, I found it gone, clog and all. The place where the trap was setting was in the head of a small ravine and near the edge of a windfall, just on the lower side of the bait pen, and but a few feet from it lay the partly decayed trunk of a large tree. I jumped on to this tree to get a good look down into the windfall to see if bruin was anywhere in sight. I had scarcely got on the log when I received a reception which I think was something equal to that the Russian Naval Fleet met with in the Corean Straits. I had jumped square into a colony of large black hornets, and they did punish me terribly in three minutes' time. My feet were swollen so that I was obliged to remove my shoes and my entire body was spotted as a leopard with great purple blotches and the internal fever which I had was most terrible. I thought that every breath that I drew was my last. I was two miles from the wagon road and nine or ten miles in the wilderness. No one knew where I was, nor where the traps were set.