“Let me take a picture first!” whispered Harry, and swung his camera into position. The sun was shining directly on the game, and the grouping could not have been better. Click! and the snap-shot was taken. Then, to make sure of a picture, he took a second shot from a slightly different position. As the second click was heard, the old buck raised his head to look around and listen. The wind was blowing from the deer toward the hunters, so the buck scented nothing unusual. “Joe, take the one on the left; Harry, try for that on the right; Fred, shoot the one near the big rock. I’ll take the buck,” whispered Joel Runnell. All agreed, and the firearms were brought into position. Fred was trembling as with “buck fever,” and Harry was equally excited. “When I count three, fire,” said the old hunter. “Ready? One, two, three!” Crack! crack! bang went the rifles and the shotguns, in a scattering fire. On the instant the old buck bounded into the air and fell lifeless, with a bullet through his left eye. The deer Joe had aimed at was mortally wounded, and fell where it had stood, kicking and plunging, and sending the snow and ice flying in all directions. Harry and Fred had not been so fortunate, although each had “nipped” his mark, Fred landing some shot in the deer’s side, and Harry striking in the hind quarter. In the meantime, the fifth deer turned, and sped from sight with the swiftness of the wind. “Hurrah! we’ve got two at least!” shouted Joe, and ran forward to finish his prize. This was an easy matter, and a second shot caused the deer to stop struggling at once. “Look out for those other chaps!” yelled Joel Runnell, suddenly. “They are going to attack us!” He was right. The two wounded deer were hurt enough to turn ugly, and now each came on with eyes that were full of fight. One sprang at Joe, and with a well-directed blow sent that youth sprawling headlong over the game he had brought low. The second charged on Fred, knocking the stout youth over likewise and then preparing to gore him with all the power of those cruel-looking prongs. CHAPTER X AMONG THE WOLVES It was a moment of extreme peril, and each of the party realized it fully. A wounded deer is an ugly creature to deal with at the best, and these animals were both wounded and half starved, for the recent heavy falls of snow had cut them off from nearly all of their food supplies. “Jump, Joe!” screamed Harry, in terror. “Jump, or you will be killed!” “Save me!” screamed Fred. “The deer is going to bore me through!” The words had scarcely been uttered, when Joel Runnell’s rifle rang out, and the deer that had attacked Fred fell over, paralyzed from a bullet through its backbone. Then Fred scrambled up, and ran for dear life down the slope leading to the lake. “Come on!” he yelled. “Come on! I’ve had enough of deer hunting! Come on, before all of us are killed!”