Frank knelt with his right foot tucked under him and his left elbow on his knee. It steadied the rifle considerably, but he had to cramp himself a little to raise the muzzle. Holding his breath he squeezed the trigger when a part of the bird filled up the curve of the rearsight, but he was mildly astonished when Harry walked toward him with the grouse in his hand. "I guess this one could be cooked," he said dubiously. "We'll take it along." Frank surveyed his victim with a thrill of pride. It was larger than the willow grouse. In fact, it seemed to him a remarkably big and handsome bird in spite of the hole in it, and he thrust it into the flour bag on his back with unalloyed satisfaction. "Is this the thing that makes the drumming in the spring?" he asked. Harry said that it was, and they scrambled through the bush for a couple of hours without seeing anything further, until they approached a swampy hollow with a steep hillside over which the undergrowth hung unusually thick. "There ought to be a black bear yonder; they like the wild cabbage," said Harry. "We'll try to crawl in. It's a pity there isn't a little wind ahead of us." They spent half an hour over the operation, and Frank realized that trailing had its drawbacks when he found that it entailed burrowing among thorny thickets and crawling across quaggy places on his hands and knees. In spite of his caution sticks would snap and it seemed to his strung-up imagination that he was making a prodigious noise. At last, however, there was another sound some distance in front of him which suddenly became louder. "A bear, sure," cried Harry excitedly. "Going off up hill. Shoot if you can see it." Frank gazed intently ahead, but could see absolutely nothing, though he could hear a smashing and crashing which presently died away again on the slope. Then Harry brought down his rifle and turned away. "You can generally hear a black bear," he said. "He goes straight and rips right through the things a deer would jump. He's a kind of harmless beast, anyway." "Could we find a deer?" Frank asked, his hopes still high. "We'll try when we've had dinner," replied his companion. "I haven't seen any lately, though that doesn't count for much, because it would be possible not to notice one if the woods were full of them. Still, they seem to have a way of clearing right out of the country every now and then for no particular reason. The bear and the timber wolves do the same thing." They ate their dinner sitting among the roots of a big cedar, while a gorgeous green and red woodpecker climbed about a neighboring trunk. Then Harry stood up and shouldered his rifle. "After this we'll leave the birds alone," he announced. "You don't want to make a noise when you're trailing deer." CHAPTER XVI FRANK KILLS A DEER They plodded through the bush for an hour or two without seeing any living thing except a few pigeons, and Harry began to look doubtful.