Chapter III: Book ONE: Repatriation (2)

Dan wondered intensely what lookout duty might be. His thoughts went back to his early study of forestry. "You see, Dan," Lennox said in explanation, "the government loses thousands of dollars every year by forest fire. A fire can be stopped easily if it is seen soon after it starts. But let it burn awhile, in this dry season, and it's a terror--a wall of flame that races through the forests and can hardly be stopped. And maybe you don't realize how enormous this region is--literally hundreds of miles across. We're the last outpost--there are four cabins, if you can find them, in the first seventy miles back to town. So they have to put lookouts on the high points, and now they're coming to the use of aeroplanes so they can keep even a better watch. All summer and until the rains come in the fall, they have to guard every minute, and even then sometimes the fires get away from them. And one of the first things a forester learns, Dan, is to be careful with fire."

"Is that the way they are started--from the carelessness of campers?"

"Partly. There's an old rule in the hills: put out every fire before you leave it. Be careful with the cigar butts, too--even the coals of a pipe. But of course the lightning starts many fires, and, I regret to say, hundreds of them are started with matches."

"But why on earth--"

"It doesn't make very good sense, does it? Well, one reason is that certain stockmen think that a burned forest makes good range--that the undervegetation that springs up when the trees are burned makes good feed for stock. And you must know, too, that there are two kinds of men in the mountains. One kind--the real mountain man, such as your grandfather was--lives just as well, just as clean as the ranchers in the valley. Some of this kind are trappers or herders. But there's another class too--the most unbelievably shiftless, ignorant people in America. They have a few acres to raise crops, and they kill deer for their hides, and most of all they make their living fighting forest fires. A fire means work for every hill-billy in the region--often five or six dollars a day and better food than they're used to. Moreover, they can loaf on the job, put in claims for extra hours, and make what to them is a fortune.

"You'll likely see a few of the breed before--before your visit here is ended. There's a family of 'em not three miles away--and that's real neighborly in the mountains--by the name of Cranston. Bert Cranston traps a little and makes moonshine; you'll probably see plenty of him before the trip is over. Sometime I'll tell you of a little difficulty that I had with him once. You needn't worry about him coming to this house; he's already received his instructions in that matter.

"But I see I'm getting all tangled up in my traces. Snowbird and a girl friend from college got jobs this summer as lookouts--all through the forest service they are hiring women for the work. They are more vigilant than men, less inclined to take chances, and work cheaper. These two girls have a cabin near a spring, and they cook their own food, and are making what is big wages in the mountains. I'm rather hoping she'll drop over for a few minutes to-night."

"Good Lord--does she travel over these hills in the darkness?"

The mountaineer laughed--a delighted sound that came somewhat curiously from the bearded lips of the stern, dark man. "Dan, I'll swear she's afraid of nothing that walks the face of the earth--and it isn't because she hasn't had experiences either. She's a dead shot with a pistol, for one thing. She's physically strong, and every muscle is hard as nails. She used to have Shag, too--the best dog in all these mountains. She's a mountain girl, I tell you; whoever wins her has got to be able to tame her!" The mountaineer laughed again. "I sent her to school, of course, but there was only one boy she'd look at--the athletic coach! And it wasn't his fault that he didn't follow her back to the mountains."

The call to supper came then, and Dan got his first sight of mountain food. There were potatoes, newly dug, mountain vegetables that were crisp and cold, a steak of peculiar shape, and a great bowl of purple berries to be eaten with sugar and cream. Dan's appetite was not as a rule particularly good. But evidently the long ride had affected him. He simply didn't have the moral courage to refuse when the elder Lennox heaped his plate.

"Good Heavens, I can't eat all that," he said, as it was passed to him. But the others laughed and told him to take heart.

He took heart. It was a singular thing, but at that first bite his sudden confidence in his gustatory ability almost overwhelmed him. All his life he had avoided meat. His mother had always been convinced that such a delicate child as he had been could not properly digest it. But all at once he decided to forego his mother's philosophies for good and all. There was certainly nothing to be gained by following them any longer. So he cut himself a bite of the tender steak--fully half as generous as the bites that Bill was consuming across the table. And its first flavor simply filled him with delight.

"What is this meat?" he asked. "I've certainly tasted it before."

"I'll bet a few dollars that you haven't, if you've lived all your life in the Middle West," Lennox answered. "Maybe you've got what the scientists call an inherited memory of it. It's the kind of meat your grandfather used to live on--venison."

Both of them had seemed pleased that he liked the venison. And both seemed boyishly eager to test his reaction to the great, wild huckleberries that were the dessert of the simple meal. He tried them with much ceremony.

Their flavor really surprised him. They had a tang, a fragrance that was quite unlike anything he had ever tasted, yet which brought a curious flood of dim, half-understood memories. It seemed to him that always he had stood on the hillsides, picking these berries as they grew, and staining his lips with them. But at once he pushed the thoughts out of his mind, thinking that his imagination was playing tricks upon him. And soon after this, Lennox led him out of the house for his first glimpse of the hills in the darkness.

They walked together out to the gate, across the first of the wide pastures where, at certain seasons, Lennox kept his cattle; and at last they came out upon the tree-covered ridge. The moon was just rising. They could see it casting a curious glint over the very tips of the pines. But it couldn't get down between them. They stood too close, too tall and thick for that. And for a moment, Dan's only sensation was one of silence.

"You have to stand still a moment, to really know anything," Lennox told him.

They both stood still. Dan was as motionless as that day in the park, long weeks before, when the squirrel had climbed on his shoulder. The first effect was a sensation that the silence was deepening around them. It wasn't really true. It was simply that he had become aware of the little continuous sounds of which usually he was unconscious, and they tended to accentuate the hush of the night. He heard his watch ticking in his pocket, the whispered stir of his own breathing, and he was quite certain that he could hear the fevered beat of his own heart in his breast. But then slowly he began to become aware of other sounds, so faint and indistinct that he really could not be sure that he heard them. There was a faint rustle and stir, as of the tops of the pine trees far away. Possibly he heard the wind too, the faintest whisper in the world through the underbrush. And finally, most wonderful of all, he began to hear one by one, over the ridge on which he stood, little whispered sounds of living creatures stirring in the thickets. He knew, just as all mountaineers know, that the wilderness about him was stirring and pulsing with life. Some of the sounds were quite clear--an occasional stir of a pebble or the crack of a twig, and some, like the faintest twitching of leaves in the brush not ten feet distant, could only be guessed at.

"What is making the sounds?" he asked.

He didn't know it, at the time, but Lennox turned quickly toward him. It wasn't that the question had surprised the mountaineer. Rather it was the tone in which Dan had spoken. It was perfectly cool, perfectly self-contained.

"The one right close is a chipmunk. I don't know what the others are; no one ever does know. Perhaps ground squirrels, or rabbits, or birds, and maybe even one of those harmless old black bears who is curious about the house. The bears have more curiosity than they can well carry around, and they say they'll sometimes come up and put their front feet on a window sill of a house, and peer through the window. They must think men are the craziest things! And of course it might be a coyote--and a mad one at that. I guess I told you that they're subject to rabies at this time of year. I'll confess I'd rather have it be anything else. And tell me--can you _smell_ anything--"

"Good Lord, Lennox! I can smell all kinds of things."

"I'm glad. Some men can't. No one can enjoy the woods if he can't smell. Part of the smells are of flowers, and part of balsam, and God only knows what the others are. They are just the wilderness--"

Dan could not only perceive the smells and sounds, but he felt that they were leaving an imprint on the very fiber of his soul. He knew one thing. He knew he could never forget this first introduction to the mountain night. The whole scene moved him in strange, deep ways in which he had never been stirred before; it left him exultant and, in deep wells of his nature far below the usual currents of excitement, a little excited too. And all the time he had that indefinable sense of familiarity, a knowledge that this was his own land, and after a long, long time of wandering in far places, he had come back to it.

Then both of them were startled out of their reflections by the clear, unmistakable sound of footsteps on the ridge. Both of them turned, and Lennox laughed softly in the darkness. "My daughter," he said. "I knew she wouldn't be afraid to come."

V

Dan could see only Snowbird's outline at first, just her shadow against the moonlit hillside. His glasses were none too good at long range. And possibly, when she came within range, the first thing that he noticed about her was her stride. The girls he knew didn't walk in quite that free, strong way. She took almost a man-size step; and yet it was curious that she did not seem ungraceful. Dan had a distinct impression that she was floating down to him on the moonlight. She seemed to come with such unutterable smoothness. And then he heard her call lightly through the darkness.

The sound gave him a distinct sense of surprise. Some way, he hadn't associated a voice like this with a mountain girl; he had supposed that there would be so many harshening influences in this wild place. Yet the tone was as clear and full as a trained singer's. It was not a high voice; and yet it seemed simply brimming, as a cup brims with wine, with the rapture of life. It was a self-confident voice too, wholly unaffected and sincere, and wholly without embarrassment.

Then she came close, and Dan saw the moonlight on her face. And so it came about, whether in dreams or wakefulness, he could see nothing else for many hours to come.

Beauty, after all, is wholly a matter of the nearest possible approach to the physical perfection that many centuries of human faces have established as a standard. Thus perfection in this case does not mean some ideal that has been imaged by a poet, but just the nearest approach to the perfect physical body that nature intended, and which is the flawless example of the type that composes the race. Thus a typical feature is the most beautiful, and by this reasoning a composite picture of all the young girl faces in the Anglo-Saxon nations would be the most beautiful face that any painter could conceive. It follows that health is above all the most essential quality to beauty, because disease, from the nature of things, means thwarted growth that could not possibly reach the typical of the race.

The girl who stood in the moonlight had health. She was simply vibrant with health. It brought a light to her eyes, and a color to her cheeks, and life and shimmer to her moonlit hair. It brought curves to her body, and strength and firmness to her limbs, and the grace of a deer to her carriage. Whether she had regular features or not Dan would have been unable to state. He didn't even notice. They weren't important when health was present. Yet there was nothing of the coarse or bold or voluptuous about her. She was just a slender girl, perhaps twenty years of age, and weighing even less than the figure occasionally to be read in the health magazines for girls of her height. And she was fresh and cool beyond all words to tell.

And Dan had no delusions about her attitude toward him. For a long instant she turned her keen, young eyes to his white, thin face; and at once it became abundantly evident that beyond a few girlish speculations she felt no interest in him. After a single moment of rather strained, polite conversation with Dan--just enough to satisfy her idea of the conventions--she began a thrilling girlhood tale to her father. And she was still telling it when they reached the house.

Dan held a chair for her in front of the fireplace, and she took it with entire naturalness. He was careful to put it where the firelight was at its height. He wanted to see its effect on the flushed cheeks, the soft dark hair. And then, standing in the shadows, he simply watched her. With the eye of an artist he delighted in her gestures, her rippling enthusiasm, her utter, irrepressible girlishness that all of Time had not years enough to kill.

He decided that she had gray eyes. Gray eyes seemed to be characteristic of the mountain people. Sometimes, when the shadows fell across them, they looked very dark, as if the pines had been reflected in them all day and the image had not yet faded out. But in an instant the shadow flicked away and left only light,--light that danced and light that laughed and light that went into him and did all manner of things to his spirit.

Bill stood watching her, his hands deep in his pockets, evidently a companion of the best. Her father gazed at her with amused tolerance. And Dan,--he didn't know in just what way he did look at her. And he didn't have time to decide. In less than fifteen minutes, and wholly without warning, she sprang up from her chair and started toward the door.

"Good Lord!" Dan breathed. "If you make such sudden motions as that I'll have heart failure. Where are you going now?"

"Back to my watch," she answered, her tone wholly lacking the personal note which men have learned to expect in the voices of women. And an instant later the three of them saw her retreating shadow as she vanished among the pines.

Dan had to be helped to bed. The long ride had been too hard on his shattered lungs; and nerves and body collapsed an instant after the door was closed behind the departing girl. He laughed weakly and begged their pardon; and the two men were really very gentle. They told him it was their own fault for permitting him to overdo. Lennox himself blew out the candle in the big, cold bedroom.

Dan saw the door close behind him, and he had an instant's glimpse of the long sweep of moonlit ridge that stretched beneath the window. Then, all at once, seemingly without warning, it simply blinked out. Not until the next morning did he really know why. Insomnia was an old acquaintance of Dan's, and he had expected to have some trouble in getting to sleep. His only real trouble was waking up again when Lennox called him to breakfast. He couldn't believe that the light at his window shade was really that of morning.

"Good Heavens!" his host exploded. "You sleep the sleep of the just."

Dan was about to tell him that on the contrary he was a very nervous sleeper, but he thought better of it. Something had surely happened to his insomnia. The next instant he even forgot to wonder about it in the realization that his tired body had been wonderfully refreshed. He had no dread now of the long tramp up the ridge that his host had planned.

But first came target practice. In Dan's baggage he had a certain very plain but serviceable sporting rifle of about thirty-forty caliber,--a gun that the information department of the large sporting-goods store in Gitcheapolis had recommended for his purpose. Except for the few moments in the store, Dan had never held a rifle in his hands.

Of course the actual aiming of a rifle is an extremely simple proposition. A man with fair use of his hands and eyes can pick it up in less time than it takes to tell it. The fine art of marksmanship consists partly in the finer sighting,--the instinctive realization of just what fraction of the front sight should be visible through the rear. But most of all it depends on the control that the nerves have over the muscles. Some men are born rifle shots; and on others it is quite impossible to thrust any skill whatever.

The nerve impulses and the muscular reflexes must be exquisitely tuned, so that the finger presses back on the trigger the identical instant that the mark is seen on the line of the sights. One quarter of a second's delay will usually disturb the aim. There must be no muscular jerk as the trigger is pressed. Shooting was never a sport for blasted nerves. And usually such attributes as the ability to judge distances, the speed and direction of a fleeing object, and the velocity of the wind can only be learned by tireless practice.

When Dan first took the rifle in his hands, Lennox was rather amazed at the ease and naturalness with which he held it. It seemed to come up naturally to his shoulder. Lennox scarcely had to tell him how to rest the butt and to drop his chin as he aimed. He began to look rather puzzled. Dan seemed to know all these things by instinct. The first shot, Dan hit the trunk of a five-foot pine at thirty paces.

"But I couldn't very well have missed it!" he replied to Lennox's cheer. "You see, I aimed at the middle--but I just grazed the edge."

The second shot was not so good, missing the tree altogether. And it was a singular thing that he aimed longer and tried harder on this shot than on the first. The third time he tried still harder, and made by far the worst shot of all.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "I'm getting worse all the time."

Lennox didn't know for sure. But he made a long guess. "It might be beginner's luck," he said, "but I'm inclined to think you're trying too hard. Take it easier--depend more on your instincts. Some marksmen are born good shots and cook themselves trying to follow rules. It might be, by the longest chance, that you're one of them--at least it won't hurt to try."

Dan's reply was to lift the rifle lightly to his shoulder, glance quickly along the trigger, and fire. The bullet struck within one inch of the center of the pine.

For a long second Lennox gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment. "My stars, boy!" he cried at last. "Was I mistaken in thinking you were a born tenderfoot--after all? Can it be that a little of your old grandfather's skill has been passed down to you? But you can't do it again."

But Dan did do it again. If anything, the bullet was a little nearer the center. And then he aimed at a more distant tree.

But the hammer snapped down ineffectively on the breech. He turned with a look of question.

"Your gun only holds five shots," Lennox explained. Reloading, Dan tried a more difficult target--a trunk almost one hundred yards distant. Of course it would have been only child's play to an experienced hunter; but to a tenderfoot it was the difficult mark indeed. Twice out of four shots Dan hit the tree trunk, and one of his two hits was practically a bull's-eye. His two misses were the result of the same mistake he had made before,--attempting to hold his aim too long.

The shots rang far through the quiet woods, long-drawn from the echoes that came rocking back from the hills. In contrast with the deep silence that is really an eternal part of the mountains, the sound seemed preternaturally loud. All over the great sweep of canyon, the wild creatures heard and were startled. One could easily imagine the Columbian deer, gone to their buckbrush to sleep, springing up and lifting pointed ears. There is no more graceful action in the whole animal world than this first, startled spring of a frightened buck. Then old Woof, feeding in the berry bushes, heard the sound too. Woof has considerably more understanding than most of the wild inhabitants of the forest, and maybe that is why he left his banquet and started falling all over his awkward self in descending the hill. It might be that Lennox would want to procure his guest a sample of bear steak; and Woof didn't care to be around to suggest such a thing. At least, that would be his train of thought according to those naturalists who insist on ascribing human intelligence to all the forest creatures. But it is true that Woof had learned to recognize a rifle shot, and he feared it worse than anything on earth.

Far away on the ridge top, a pair of wolves sat together with no more evidence of life than two shadows. One of the most effective accomplishments a wolf possesses is its ability to freeze into a motionless thing, so the sharpest eye can scarcely detect him in the thickets. It is an advantage in hunting, and it is an even greater advantage when being hunted. Yet at the same second they sprang up, simply seemed to spin in the dead pine needles, and brought up with sharp noses pointed and ears erect, facing the valley.

A human being likely would have wondered at their action. It is doubtful that human ears could have detected that faint tremor in the air which was all that was left of the rifle report. But of course this is a question that would be extremely difficult to prove; for as a rule the senses of the larger forest creatures, with the great exception of scent, are not as perfectly developed as those of a human being. A wolf can see better than a man in the darkness, but not nearly as far in the daylight. But the wolves knew this sound. Too many times they had seen their pack-fellows die in the snow when such a report as this, only intensified a thousand times, cracked at them through the winter air. No animal in all the forest has been as relentlessly hunted as the wolves, and they have learned their lessons. For longer years than most men would care to attempt to count, men have waged a ceaseless war upon them. And they have learned that their safety lies in flight.

Very quietly, and quite without panic, the wolves turned and headed farther into the forests. Possibly no other animal would have been frightened at such a distance. And it is certainly true that in the deep, winter snows not even the wolves would have heeded the sound. The snows bring Famine; and when Famine comes to keep its sentry-duty over the land, all the other forest laws are immediately forgotten or ignored. The pack forgets all its knowledge of the deadliness of men in the starving times.

The grouse heard the sound, and, silly creatures that they are, even they raised their heads for a single instant from their food. The felines--the great, tawny mountain lions and their smaller cousins, the lynx--all devoted at least an instant of concentrated attention to it. A raccoon, sleeping in a pine, opened its eyes, and a lone bull elk, such as some people think is beyond all other things the monarch of the forest, rubbed his neck against a tree trunk and wondered.

But yet there remained two of the larger forest creatures that did not heed at all. One was Urson, the porcupine, whose stupidity is beyond all measuring. He was too slow and patient and dull to give attention to a rifle bullet. And the other was Graycoat the coyote, gray and strange and foam-lipped, on the hillside. Graycoat could hear nothing but strange whinings and voices that rang ever in his ears. All other sounds were obscured. The reason was extremely simple. In the dog days a certain malady sometimes comes to the wild creatures, and it is dreaded worse than drought or cold or any of the manifold terrors of their lives. No one knows what name they have for this sickness. Human beings call it hydrophobia. And the coyotes are particularly susceptible to it.

Ordinarily the name of coyote is, among the beasts, a synonym for cowardice as well as a certain kind of detested cunning. All the cowardice of a mountain lion and a wolf and a lynx put together doesn't equal the amount that Graycoat carried in the end of his tail. That doesn't mean timidity. Timidity is a trait of the deer, a gift of nature for self-preservation, and no one holds it against them. In fact, it makes them rather appealing. Cowardice is a lack of moral courage to remain and fight when nature has afforded the necessary weapons to fight with. It is sort of a betrayal of nature,--a misuse of powers. No one calls a rabbit a coward because it runs away. A warlike rabbit is something that no man has ever seen since the beginning of the world, and probably never will. Nature hasn't given the little animal any weapons.

But this is not true of the wolf or cougar. A wolf has ninety pounds of lightning-quick muscles, and teeth that are nothing but a set of very well-sharpened and perfectly arranged daggers. A cougar not only has fangs, but talons that can rend flesh more terribly than the cogs of a machine, and strength to make the air hum under his paw as he strikes it down. And so it is an extremely disappointing thing to see either of these animals flee in terror from an Airedale not half their size,--a sight that most mountain men see rather often. The fact that they act with greater courage in the famine times, and that either of them will fight to the very death when brought to bay, are not extenuating circumstances to their cowardice. A mouse will bite the hand that picks it up if it has no other choice.

A coyote is, at least in a measure, equipped for fighting. He is smaller than a wolf, and his fangs are almost as terrible. Yet a herd of determined sheep, turning to face him, puts him in a panic. The smallest dog simply petrifies him with terror. And a rifle report,--he has been known to put a large part of a county between himself and the source of the sound in the shortest possible time. If a mountain man feels like fighting, he simply calls another a coyote. It is more effective than impugning the virtue of his female ancestors. To be called a coyote means to be termed the lowest, most despised creature of which the imagination can conceive.

And besides being a perfect, unprincipled coward, he is utterly without pride. And that is saying a great deal. Most large animals have more pride than they have intelligence, particularly the bear and the moose. A mature bear, dying before his foes, will often refrain from howling even in the greatest agony. He is simply too proud. A moose greatly dislikes to appear to run away in the presence of enemies. He will walk with the dignity of a bishop until he thinks the brush has obscured him; and then he will simply fly! And there was a dog once, long ago, which, meeting on the highways a dog that was much larger and that could not possibly be mastered, would simply turn away his eyes and pretend not to see him.

A coyote is wholly without this virtue, as well as most of the other virtues of the animal world. He not only eats carrion--because if one started to condemn all the carrion-eating animals of the forest he would soon have precious few of them left--but he also eats old shoes off rubbish piles. Unlike the wolf, he does not even find his courage in the famine times. He has cunning, but cunning is not greatly beloved in men or beasts. Most folk prefer a kindly, blundering awkwardness, a simplicity of heart and spirit, such as are to be found in Woof the bear.

But Graycoat has one tendency that makes all the other forest creatures regard him with consternation: he is extremely liable to madness. Along in dog days he is seen suddenly to begin to rush through the thickets, barking and howling and snapping at invisible enemies, with foam dropping from his terrible lips. His eyes grow yellow and strange. And this is the time that even the bull elk turns off his trail. No one cares to meet Graycoat when the hydrophobia is upon him. At such time all his cunning and his terror are quite forgotten in his agony, and he is likely to make an unprovoked charge on Woof himself.

Now Graycoat came walking stiff-legged down through the thickets. And the forest creatures, from the smallest to the great, forgot the far-off peal of the rifle bullets to get out of his way.

VI

Dan and Lennox started together up the long slope of the ridge. Dan alone was armed; Lennox went with him solely as a guide. The deer season had just opened, and it might be that Dan would want to procure one of these creatures.

"But I'm not sure I want to hunt deer," Dan told him. "You speak of them as being so beautiful--"

"They are beautiful, and your grandfather would never hunt them either, except for meat. But maybe you'll change your mind when you see a buck. Besides, we might run into a lynx or a panther. But not very likely, without dogs."

They trudged up, over the carpet of pine needles. They fought their way through a thicket of buckbrush. Once they saw the gray squirrels in the tree tops. And before Lennox had as much as supposed they were near the haunts of big game, a yearling doe sprang up from its bed in the thickets.

For an instant she stood motionless, presenting a perfect target. It was evident that she had heard the sound of the approaching hunters, but had not as yet located or identified them with her near-sighted eyes. Lennox whirled to find Dan standing very still, peering along the barrel of his rifle. But he didn't shoot. A light danced in his eyes, and his fingers crooked nervously about the trigger, but yet there was no pressure. The deer, seeing Lennox move, leaped into her terror-pace,--that astounding run that is one of the fastest gaits in the whole animal world. In the wink of an eye, she was out of sight.

"Why didn't you shoot?" Lennox demanded.

"Shoot? It was a doe, wasn't it?"

"Good Lord, of course it was a doe! But there are no game laws that go back this far. Besides--you aimed at it."

"I aimed just to see if I could catch it through my sights. And I could. My glasses sort of made it blur--but I think--perhaps--that I could have shot it. But I'm not going to kill does. There must be some reason for the game laws, or they wouldn't exist."

"You're a funny one. Come three thousand miles to hunt and then pass up the first deer you see. You could almost have been your grandfather, to have done that. He thought killing a deer needlessly was almost as bad as killing a man. They are beautiful things, aren't they?"

Dan answered him with startling emphasis. But the look that he wore said more than his words.

They trudged on, and Lennox grew thoughtful. He was recalling the picture that he had seen when he had whirled to look at Dan, immediately after the deer had leaped from its bed. It puzzled him a little. He had turned to find the younger man in a perfect posture to shoot, his feet placed in exactly the position that years of experience had taught Lennox was correct; and withal, absolutely motionless. Of all the many things to learn in the wilderness, to stand perfectly still in the presence of game is one of the hardest. The natural impulse is to start,--a nervous reflex that usually terrifies the game. The principle of standing still is, of course, that it takes a certain length of time for the deer to look about after it makes its first leap from its bed, and if the hunter is motionless, the deer is usually unable to identify him as a thing to fear. It gives a better chance for a shot. What many hunters take years to learn, Dan had seemed to know by instinct. Could it be, after all, that this slender weakling, even now bowed down with a terrible malady, had inherited the true frontiersman's instincts of his ancestors?

Then all at once Lennox halted in his tracks, evidently with no other purpose than to study the tall form that now was walking up the trail in front of him. And he uttered a little exclamation of amazement.

"Listen, Dan!" he cried suddenly. "Haven't you ever been in the woods before?"

Dan turned, smiling. "No. What have I done now?"

"What have you done! You're doing something that I never saw a tenderfoot do in my life, before. I've known men to hunt for years--literally years--and not know how to do it. And that is--to place your feet."

"Place my feet? I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I mean--to walk silently. To stalk, damn it, Dan! This brush is dry. It's dry as tinder. A cougar can get over it like so much smoke, and a man who's lived all his life in the hills can usually climb a ridge and not make any more noise than a young avalanche. Just now I had a feeling that I wasn't hearing you walk, and I thought my ears must be going back on me. I stopped to see. You were doing it, Dan. You were stalking--putting down your feet like a cat. It's the hardest thing to learn there is, and you're doing it the first half-hour."

Dan laughed, delighted more than he cared to show. "Well, what of it?" he asked.

"What of it? That's it--what of it. And what caused it, and all about it. Go on and let me think."

The result of all this thought was at least to hover in the near vicinity of a certain conclusion. That conclusion was that at least a few of the characteristics of his grandfather had been passed down to Dan. It meant that possibly, if time remained, he would not turn out such a weakling, after all. Of course his courage, his nerve, had yet to be tested; but the fact remained that long generations of frontiersmen ancestors had left this influence upon him. The wild was calling to him, wakening instincts long smothered in cities, but sure and true as ever. It was the beginning of regeneration. Voices of the long past were speaking to him, and the Failings once more had begun to run true to form. Inherited tendencies were in a moment changing this weak, diseased youth into a frontiersman and wilderness inhabitant such as his ancestors had been before him.

But before ever Lennox had a chance to think all around the subject, to actually convince himself that Dan really was a throwback and recurrence of type, there ensued on that gaunt ridge a curious adventure. The test of nerve and courage was nearer than either of them had guessed.

They were slipping along over the pine needles, their eyes intent on the trail ahead. And then Lennox saw a curious thing. He beheld Dan suddenly stop in the trail and turn his eyes towards a heavy thicket that lay perhaps one hundred yards to their right. For an instant he looked almost like a wild creature himself. His head was lowered, as if he were listening. His muscles were set and ready.

Lennox had prided himself that he had retained all the powers of his five senses, and that few men in the mountains had keener ears than he. Yet it was truth that at first he only knew the silence, and the stir and pulse of his own blood. He assumed then that Dan was watching something that from his position, twenty feet behind, he could not see. He tried to probe the thickets with his eyes.

Then Dan whispered. Ever so soft a sound, but yet distinct in the silence. "There's something living in that thicket."

Then Lennox heard it too. As they stood still, the sound became ever clearer and more pronounced. Some living creature was advancing toward them; and twigs were cracking beneath its feet. The sounds were rather subdued, and yet, as the animal approached, both of them instinctively knew that they were extremely loud for the usual footsteps of any of the wild creatures.

"What is it?" Dan asked quietly.

Lennox was so intrigued by the sounds that he was not even observant of the peculiar, subdued quality in Dan's voice. Otherwise, he would have wondered at it. "I'm free to confess I don't know," he said. "It's booming right towards us, like most animals don't care to do. Of course it may be a human being. You must watch out for that."

They waited. The sound ended. They stood straining for a long moment without speech.

"That was the dumdest thing!" Lennox went on. "Of course it might have been a bear--you never know what they're going to do. It might have got sight of us and turned off. But I can't believe that it was just a deer--"

But then his words chopped squarely off in his throat. The plodding advance commenced again. And the next instant a gray form revealed itself at the edge of the thicket.

It was Graycoat, half-blind with his madness, and desperate in his agony.

There was no more deadly thing in all the hills than he. Even the bite of a rattlesnake would have been welcomed beside his. He stood a long instant, and all his instincts and reflexes that would have ordinarily made him flee in abject terror were thwarted and twisted by the fever of his madness. He stared a moment at the two figures, and his red eyes could not interpret them. They were simply foes, for it was true that when this racking agony was upon him, even lifeless trees seemed foes sometimes. He seemed eerie and unreal as he gazed at them out of his burning eyes; and the white foam gathered at his fangs. And then, wholly without warning, he charged down at them.

He came with unbelievable speed. The elder Lennox cried once in warning and cursed himself for venturing forth on the ridge without a gun. He was fully twenty feet distant from Dan; yet he saw in an instant his only course. This was no time to trust their lives to the marksmanship of an amateur. He sprang towards Dan, intending to wrench the weapon from his hand.

But he didn't achieve his purpose. At the first step his foot caught in a projecting root, and he was shot to his face on the trail. But a long life in the wilderness had developed Lennox's reflexes to an abnormal degree; many crises had taught him muscle and nerve control; and only for a fraction of an instant, a period of time that few instruments are fine enough to measure, did he lie supinely upon the ground. He rolled on, into a position of defense. But he knew now he could not reach the younger man before the mad coyote would be upon them. The matter was out of his hands. Everything depended on the aim and self-control of the tenderfoot.

And at the same instant he wondered, so intensely that all other mental processes were subjugated to it, why he had not heard Dan shoot.

He looked up, and the whole weird picture was thrown upon the retina of his eyes. The coyote was still racing straight toward Dan, a gray demon that in his madness was more terrible than any charging bear or elk. For there is an element of horror about the insane, whether beasts or men, that cannot be denied. Both men felt it, with a chill that seemed to penetrate clear to their hearts. The eyes flamed, the white fangs of Graycoat caught the sunlight. And Dan stood erect in his path, his rifle half raised to his shoulder; and even in that first frenzied instant in which Lennox looked at him, he saw there was a strange impassiveness, a singular imperturbability on his face.

"Shoot, man!" Lennox shouted. "What are you waiting for?"

But Dan didn't shoot. His hand whipped to his face, and he snatched off his thick-lensed glasses. The eyes that were revealed were narrow and deeply intent. And by now, the frenzied coyote was not fifty feet distant.

All that had occurred since the animal charged had possibly taken five seconds. Sometimes five seconds is just a breath; but as Lennox waited for Dan to shoot, it seemed like a period wholly without limit. He wondered if the younger man had fallen into that strange paralysis that a great terror sometimes imbues. "Shoot!" he screamed again.

But it is doubtful if Dan even heard his shout. At that instant his gun slid into place, his head lowered, his eyes seemed to burn along the glittering barrel. His finger pressed back against the trigger, and the roar of the report rocked through the summer air.

The gun was of large caliber; and no living creature could stand against the furious, shocking power of the great bullet. The lead went straight home, full through the neck and slanting down through the breast, and the coyote recoiled as if an irresistible hand had smitten him. It is doubtful if there was even a muscular quiver after Graycoat struck the ground, not twenty feet from where Dan stood. And the rifle report echoed back to find only silence.

Lennox got up off the ground and moved over toward the dead coyote. He looked a long time at the gray body. And then he stepped back to where Dan waited on the trail.

"I take it all back," he said simply.

"You take what back?"

"What I thought about you--that the Failing line had gone to the dogs. I'll never call you a tenderfoot again."

"You are very kind," Dan answered. He looked rather tired, but was wholly unshaken. For an instant Lennox looked at his eyes and his steady hands.

"But tell me one thing," Lennox asked. "I saw the way you looked down the barrel. I could see how firm you held the rifle--the way you kept your head. And that is all like your grandfather. But why, when you had a repeating rifle, did you wait so long to shoot?"

"I just had one cartridge in my gun. I fired nine times back at the trees and only re-loaded once. I didn't think of it until the coyote charged."

Lennox's answer was the last thing in the world to be expected. He opened his straight mouth and uttered a great, boyish yell of joy. His eyes seemed to light. It is a phenomenon that is ever so much oftener imagined than really seen; but the sudden, elated sparkle that came in those gray orbs was past denial. The eyes of the two men met, and Lennox shook him by the shoulder.

"You're not Dan Failing's grandson--you're Dan Failing himself!" he shouted. "No one but him would have had the self-control to wait till the game was almost on top of him--no one but him would have kept his head in a time like this. You're Dan Failing himself, I tell you, come back to earth. Grandson nothing! You're a throwback, and now you've got those glasses off, I can see his eyes looking right out of yours. Step on 'em, Dan. You'll never need 'em again. And give up that idea of dying in four months right now; I'm going to make you live. We'll fight that disease to a finish--and win!"

And that is the way that Dan Failing came into his heritage in the land of his own people, and in which a new spirit was born in him to fight--and win--and live.