He was following her and the fear drove her and she ran hard; long and deep in the first burst the way she would have run to get away from wolves—she ran for her life. John followed the tracks easily, not hurrying. He still wasn’t quite sure why he was staying with her, tracking her, but he kept going for another hour and a half to cover the same distance she had covered in eight and a half minutes. Speed was everything to her, to all deer. When mortal danger threatened the only recourse was speed, burning speed, speed that tore energy from the center of the deer and used her up. She ran that way now. Ran from the danger of John and while she had paused long, too long, in the freeze position, she made up for it by now getting as much distance as possible in the shortest possible time between her body and the man with the gun. But running long and hard burned her out. It showed in her tracks, a slight wobble now and then from running past her short-range endurance. She would have to rest soon, he knew, would have to bed down.
