Remember this: Come follow me and you'll end up everywhere.
"Once on a golden autumn morning I was standing with my Negro foreman in the pinelands. He was quite matchless as a woodsman, as good as an Indian of the old days. Before us was a dense bay through which a deer drive was coming. On the still and balmy air the clamor of hounds and of drivers was momently increasing. Suddenly Prince and I saw a regal buck emerge from the dense thicket ahead of us. Rather deliberately he walked out into the open woods, where he came to a stand, facing us. We were about one hundred and fifty yards from him; our backs against two pines. We were standing close together. Whatever air was stirring was from the deer to us. He could not wind us; and as we intended to remain motionless he would not see us.
Behind him all the while the clamor kept increasing. The hounds were on his trail, and were coming fast. Yet there he stood, now and then turning his grand head to listen to the increasing uproar behind him. With all that tumult forcing him forward, he stood calculatingly still. Without moving, I whispered to my foreman, "Prince, why is he standing there like that? Why doesn't he come on?"
"He's readin' his book," the Negro said softly.
That old stag, with a wild hurricane of hunting at his very heels, stood there deliberately, ---"reading his book," mapping his elusive strategy. Before him lay thousands of acres of wild forest, and his obvious course would be to race straight ahead. The speed of the hounds would not trouble him, for no hound living could possibly overtake him; moreover, a master at skulking, he could utterly bewilder the dogs by dodging. But he had in his mind a way of escape that was by no means the obvious way.
A mile behind him lay the great river, beyond which was the vast wilderness of the Delta. There, he knew, was absolute safety for him.
Even as Prince and I watched in admiring amazement the great stag turned, threw up the tall banner of his snowy tail, and raced straight back the way he had come.
"Well, Prince," I said, "he surely read his book."
"And he done find the answer," Prince replied
Here, you see, was a case of subtle strategy, and a decision made even while peril was imminent. That buck thought his way out of danger; and that way of escape is, I believe, the one most commonly used by wild creatures to deliver themselves from death."
Written by: Archibald Rutledge, deceased.
~Courtesy of AOFH~
