Over his left shoulder was slung a belt of deerskin, from which depended an enormous ox-horn, so thinly scraped as to discover the powder it contained. The larger end was fitted ingeniously and securely with a wooden bottom, and the other was stopped tight by a little plug. A leathern pouch hung before him, from which, as he concluded his last speech, he took a small measure, and, filling it accurately with powder, he commenced reloading the rifle, which, as its butt rested on the snow before him, reached nearly to the top of his foxskin cap.

The traveler had been closely examining the wounds during these movements, and now, without heeding the ill-humor of the hunter’s manner, he exclaimed:

“I would fain establish a right, Natty, to the honor of this death, and surely if the hit in the neck be mine, it is enough; for the shot in the heart was unnecessary—what we call an act of supererogation, Leatherstocking.”

“You may call it by what larned name you please, Judge,” said the hunter, throwing his rifle across his left arm, and knocking up a brass lid in the breech, from which he took a small piece of greased leather, and wrapping a ball in it, forced them down by main strength on the powder, where he continued to pound them while speaking. “It’s far easier to call names than to shoot a buck on the spring, but the cretur came by his end from a younger hand than either your’n or mine, as I said before.”

“What say you, my friend,” cried the traveler, turning pleasantly to Natty’s companion; “shall we toss up this dollar for the honor, and you keep the silver if you lose; what say you, friend?”

“That I killed the deer,” answered the young man with a little haughtiness, as he leaned on another long rifle, similar to that of Natty.

“Here are two to one, indeed,” replied the Judge, with a smile. “I am outvoted—overruled, as we say on the bench. There is Aggy; he can’t vote, being a slave; and Bess is a minor—so I must even make the best of it. But you’ll sell me the venison; and the deuce is in it, but I make a good story about its death.”

“The meat is none of mine to sell,” said Leatherstocking, adopting a little of his companion’s hauteur. “For my part I have known animals travel days with shots in the neck, and I’m none of them who’ll rob a man of his rightful dues.”

“You are tenacious of your rights this cold evening, Natty,” returned the Judge, with unconquerable good nature. “But what say you, young man; will three dollars pay you for the buck?”

“First let us determine the question of right to the satisfaction of us both,” said the youth, firmly but respectfully, and with a pronunciation and language vastly superior to his appearance. “With how many shot did you load your gun?”

“With five, sir,” said the Judge, a little struck with the other’s manner. “Are they not enough to slay a buck like this?”

“One would do it; but”—moving to the tree from behind which he had appeared—“you know, sir, you fired in this direction—here are four of the bullets in the tree.”

The Judge examined the fresh marks in the bark of the pine, and shaking his head, said, with a laugh:

“You are making out the case against yourself, my young advocate—where is the fifth?”

“Here,” said the youth, throwing aside the rough overcoat that he wore and exhibiting a hole in his undergarment, through which large drops of blood were oozing.

“Good God!” exclaimed the Judge with horror. “Have I been trifling here about an empty distinction, and a fellow creature suffering from my hands without a murmur? But hasten—quick—get into my sleigh—it is but a mile to the village, where surgical aid can be obtained; all shall be done at my expense, and thou shalt live with me until thy wound is healed, aye, and forever afterward.”

“I thank you for your good intention, but I must decline your offer. I have a friend who would be uneasy were he to hear that I am hurt and away from him. The injury is but slight, and the bullet has missed the bones; but I believe, sir, you will now admit my title to the venison.”

“Admit it!” repeated the agitated Judge. “I here give thee a right to shoot deer, or bears, or anything thou pleasest in my woods, forever. Leatherstocking is the only other man that I have granted the same privilege to, and the time is coming when it will be of value. But I buy your deer—here, this bill will pay thee, both for thy shot and my own.”

The old hunter gathered his tall person up into an air of pride during this dialogue, but he waited until the other had done speaking.

“There’s them living who say that Nathaniel Bumppo’s right to shoot on these hills is of older date than Marmaduke Temple’s right to forbid him,” he said. “But if there’s a law about it at all, though who ever heard of a law that a man shouldn’t kill deer where he pleased!—but if there is a law at all, it should be to keep people from the use of smoothbores. A body never knows where his lead will fly when he pulls the trigger of one of them uncertain firearms.”

Without attending to the soliloquy of Natty, the youth bowed his head silently to the offer of the bank note and replied:

“Excuse me; I have need of the venison.”

“But this will buy you many deer,” said the Judge. “Take it, I entreat you,” and lowering his voice to a whisper, he added; “it is for a hundred dollars.”

For an instant only, the youth seemed to hesitate, and then, blushing even through the high color that the cold had given to his cheeks, as if with inward shame at his own weakness, he again declined the offer.

During this scene the female arose, and, regardless of the cold air, she threw back the hood which concealed her features and now spoke with great earnestness.

“Surely, surely—young man—sir—you would not pain my father so much as to have him think that he leaves a fellow creature in this wilderness whom his own hand has injured. I entreat you will go with us and receive medical aid.”

Whether his wound became more painful, or there was something irresistible in the voice and manner of the fair pleader for her father’s feelings, we know not; but the distance of the young man’s manner was sensibly softened by this appeal, and he stood in apparent doubt, as if reluctant to comply with and yet unwilling to refuse her request. The Judge, for such being his office must in future be his title, watched, with no little interest, the display of this singular contention in the feelings of the youth; and advancing, kindly took his hand, and as he pulled him gently towards the sleigh, urged him to enter it.

“There is no human aid nearer than Templeton,” he said, “and the hut of Natty is full three miles from this; come—come, my young friend, go with us, and let the new doctor look to this shoulder of thine. Here is Natty will take the tidings of thy welfare to thy friend, and shouldst thou require it, thou shalt return home in the morning.”

The young man succeeded in extricating his hand from the warm grasp of the Judge, but he continued to gaze on the face of the female, who, regardless of the cold, was still standing with her fine features exposed, which expressed feelings that eloquently seconded the request of her father. Leatherstocking stood, in the meantime, leaning upon his long rifle with his head turned a little to one side, as if engaged in sagacious musing; when, having apparently satisfied his doubts by revolving the subject in his mind, he broke silence.

“It may be best to go, lad, after all; for if the shot hangs under the skin, my hand is getting too old to be cutting into human flesh as I once used to. Though some thirty years agone, in the old war, when I was out under Sir William, I traveled seventy miles alone in the howling wilderness with a rifle bullet in my thigh and then cut it out with my own jackknife. Old Indian John knows the time well. I met him with a party of the Delawares, on the trail of the Iroquois, who had been down and taken five scalps on the Schoharie. But I made a mark on the redskin that I’ll warrant he carried to his grave! I took him on his posteerum, saving the lady’s presence, as he got up from the ambushment, and rattled three buckshot into his naked hide, so close that you might have laid a broad joe upon them all.” Here Natty stretched out his long neck and straightened his body as he opened his mouth, which exposed a single tusk of yellow bone, while his eyes, his face, even his whole frame seemed to laugh, although no sound was emitted except a kind of thick hissing as he inhaled his breath in quavers. “I had lost my bullet mold in crossing the Oneida outlet, and had to make shift with the buckshot; but the rifle was true and didn’t scatter like your two-legged thing there, Judge, which don’t do, I find, to hunt in company with.”

Natty’s apology to the delicacy of the young lady was unnecessary, for, while he was speaking, she was too much employed in helping her father to remove certain articles of baggage to hear him. Unable to resist the kind urgency of the travelers any longer, the youth, though still with an unaccountable reluctance, suffered himself to be persuaded to enter the sleigh.