The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
Children's literature
The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone: she was game to
the tip of her high-bred ears. But the fearful pace at which she
had just been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart
beat like a trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still
fled industriously up the right bank of the stream. When she had
gone a couple of miles, and the dogs were evidently gaining again,
she crossed the broad, deep brook, climbed the steep, left bank,
and fled on in the direction of the Mount Marcy trail. The fording
of the river threw the hounds off for a time. She knew, by their
uncertain yelping up and down the opposite bank, that she had a
little respite; she used it, however, to push on until the baying
was faint in her ears; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the
ground.
This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused again by the
baying pack, she leaped forward with better speed, though without
that keen feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the
morning. It was still a race for life; but the odds were in her
favor, she thought. She did not appreciate the dogged persistence
of the hounds, nor had any inspiration told her that the race is
not to the swift. She was a little confused in her mind where to
go; but an instinct kept her course to the left, and consequently
further away from her fawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as
the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, she kept to the
southwest, crossed the stream again, left Panther Gorge on her
right, and ran on by Haystack and Skylight in the direction of the
Upper Ausable Pond. I do not know her exact course through this
maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and frightful wildernesses. I
only know that the poor thing worked her way along painfully, with
sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lying down "dead-beat" at
intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the remorseless dogs,
until, late in the afternoon, she staggered down the shoulder of a
Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake. If she could put
that piece of water between her and her pursuers, she would be
safe. Had she strength to swim it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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