"Now!" whispered Jack. "He may not come any nearer. If you can, hit him when he is trotting; or, if you'll wait for him to stop, I believe you can get him. I think I would wait; he'll probably stop before he has gone far."
So it turned out. Before long the buck stopped and faced squarely around, and Donald, with the memory of the previous night's shooting in his mind, drew a very fine sight on the antelope's chest, low down, and fired. The buck reared on his hind legs and, holding his fore legs stiffly out before him, fell over backward. The does looked at him for a moment and then scurried off like so many frightened rabbits, while the boys, rising from the ground, stretched their cramped limbs and stamped about to restore the circulation.
"That was another good shot, Donald. I'd like to know how you held, and we'll see just where the ball hit."
"I drew the sight just as fine as I possibly could, and held on the very lower edge of his breast. If the ball flew as high as last night it seems to me it ought to have broken the lower part of his neck, but if I held right, and the life line is as low as I fancy you say it is, I believe that I must have hit his heart."
When they reached the buck, they found that Donald had done just that. The ball had entered an inch and a half or two inches above the lower level of the breast, and a little to one side of the breast-bone; had pierced the heart and gone entirely through the antelope.
"A good shot!" he exclaimed. "I shouldn't be surprised if you could beat us all with the rifle."
The shot had so thoroughly bled the antelope that it was unnecessary to cut its throat, and when it was ripped up all the blood in its body seemed to have gathered in the visceral cavity.
Before the antelope was dressed Jack Mason came up with their horses.
"My!" he exclaimed, bending over and resting on the saddle-horn as he watched the boys at work, "that's a fine head. You don't often see one like that. Why don't you take it, Donald, and carry it back to the old country to ornament the walls of your baronial hall?"
"I believe I will, Mason," said Donald; "and when I get it hung on those walls, I'll invite you and Claib Wood to come over and give us your little barroom act. We can have lots of Western color in the village where I live, with just a few of the properties."