He fitted it to the string and drew the bow far back, almost to the head of the shaft.

Now he was the hunter only and the spirit of hunting ancestors for many generations was poured into him.

His eye followed the line of coming flight and he chose the exact spot on the sleek body beneath which the great heart lay.
The stag, with his head upraised, still pulled at the tender top of a bush, and the deceitful wind, which blew from him toward Tayoga, brought no warning.

Nor did the squirrel chattering in the tree or the bird singing on the bough just over his head tell him that the hunter was near.

Tayoga looked again down the arrow at the chosen place on the gleaming body of the deer, and with a sudden and powerful contraction of the muscles, bending the bow a little further, loosed the shaft.
The arrow flew singing through the air as swift and deadly as a steel dart and was buried in the heart of the stag, which, leaping upward, fell, writhed convulsively a moment or two, and died.