Chapter III: On the Buck's Track

Thirty-six hours of fast had followed upon the meal of clay in Yvon's hut. Hunger gnawed again at the family's entrails.

During these thirty-six hours a heavy snow had fallen. Yvon went out. His family was starving within. He had death on his soul. He went towards the nets that he had spread in the hope of snaring some bird of passage during the snow storm. His expectations were deceived. A little distance from the nets lay the Fountain of the Hinds, now frozen hard. Snow covered its borders. Yvon perceived the imprint of a buck's feet. The size of the imprint on the snow announced the animal's bulk. Yvon estimated its weight by the cracks in the ice on the stream that it had just crossed, the ice being otherwise thick enough to support Yvon himself. This was the first time in many months that the forester had run across a buck's track. Could the animal, perhaps, have escaped the general mortality of its kind? Did it come from some distant forest? Yvon knew not, but he followed the fresh track with avidity. Yvon had with him his bow and arrows. To reach the animal, kill it and smoke its flesh meant the saving of the lives of his family, now on the verge of starvation. It meant their life for at least a month. Hope revivified the forester's energies; he pursued the buck; the regular impress of its steps showed that the animal was quietly following one of the beaten paths of the forest; moreover its track lay so clearly upon the snow that he could not have crossed the stream more than an hour before, else the edges of the imprint that he left behind him would have been less sharp and would have been rounded by the temperature of the air. Following its tracks, Yvon confidently expected to catch sight of the buck within an hour and bring the animal down. In the ardor of the chase, the forester forgot his hunger. He had been on the march about an hour when suddenly in the midst of the profound silence that reigned in the forest, the wind brought a confused noise to his ears. It sounded like the distant bellowing of a stag. The circumstance was extraordinary. As a rule the beasts of the woods do not cry out except at night. Thinking he might have been mistaken, Yvon put his ear to the ground.... There was no more room for doubt. The buck was bellowing at about a thousand yards from where Yvon stood. Fortunately a turn of the path concealed the hunter from the game. These wild animals frequently turn back to see behind them and listen. Instead of following the path beyond the turning that concealed him, Yvon entered the copse expecting to make a short cut, head off the buck, whose gait was slow, hide behind the bushes that bordered the path, and shoot the animal when it hove in sight.

The sky was overcast; the wind was rising; with deep concern Yvon noticed several snow flakes floating down. Should the snow fall heavily before the buck was shot, the animal's tracks would be covered, and if opportunity failed to dart an arrow at it from the forester's ambuscade, he could not then expect to be able to trace the buck any further. Yvon's fears proved correct. The wind soon changed into a howling storm surcharged with thick snow. The forester quitted the thicket and struck for the path beyond the turning and at about a hundred paces from the clearing. The buck was nowhere to be seen. The animal had probably caught wind of its pursuer and jumped for safety into the thicket that bordered the path. It was impossible to determine the direction that it had taken. Its tracks vanished under the falling snow, that lay in ever thicker layers.

A prey to insane rage, Yvon threw himself upon the ground and rolled in the snow uttering furious cries. His hunger, recently forgotten in the ardor of the hunt, tore at his entrails. He bit one of his arms and the pain thus felt recalled him to his senses. Almost delirious, he rose with the fixed intent of retracing the buck, killing the animal, spreading himself beside its carcass, devouring it raw, and not rising again so long as a shred of meat remained on its bones. At that moment, Yvon would have defended his prey with his knife against even his own son. Possessed by the fixed and delirious idea of retracing the buck, Yvon went hither and thither at hap-hazard, not knowing in what direction he walked. He beat about a long time, and night began to approach, when a strange incident came to his aid and dissipated his mental aberration.