I'm terribly sorry you didn't fire." "Good girl!" said Duane in a low voice as she sped by him on her skis, rifle ready for emergencies as old Miller cautiously approached the shaggy brown heap, knife glittering.
But there was no emergency; Miller's knife sank to the hilt; Geraldine uncocked her rifle and bent curiously over the dead boar.
"Nice tusks.

Miss Seagrave," commented the old man.

"He's fat as butter, too.

I cal'late he'll tip the beam at a hundred and forty paound!" The hunters clustered around with exclamations of admiration; Rosalie, distractingly pretty in her white wool kilts and cap, knelt down and touched the fierce, long-nosed head and stroked the furry jowl.
"Oh, Delancy!" she wailed, "why _didn't_ you 'plug' him as you promised?
_I_ simply _couldn't_ shoot; Duane tried to make me, but I was so excited and so surprised to see the creature run so fast that all my ideas went out of my head and I never thought of pulling that wretched trigger!" "That," said Delancy, very red, "is precisely what happened to me." And, turning to Geraldine, who looked dreadfully repentant: "I heard you tell me to shoot, and I merely gawked at the beast like a rubbering jay at a ten-cent show." "Everybody does that at first," said Duane cheerfully; "I'll bet anything that you and Rosalie empty your magazines at the next one." "We really must, Delancy," insisted Rosalie as she and Geraldine turned away when Miller and Kemp tucked up their sleeves and unsheathed their knives in preparation for unpleasant but necessary details.
But they worked like lightning; and in exactly seven minutes the heavy beast was drawn, washed out with snow, roped, and hung to a tree well out of reach of any four-footed forest marauders that might prowl that way before night.
Geraldine, smiling her deprecation of their praise, waited with the others until the two guides were ready.

Then, in the same order as before, they moved forward, descended the slope, and came into a strange wilderness of stark gray alders that stretched away in every direction.
And threading, circling, crossing each other everywhere among the alders ran the trails of deer and wild boar, deep and fresh in the powdery snow.
At intervals, as they advanced, hard-wood ridges crossed the bewildering alder labyrinths.