n such ground as that. After a little, though, I did find
something that puzzled me. Lying conspicuously near the cattle trail
that led upward into the higher hills, was a large piece of fresh
beef. Stopping, I turned the meat over cautiously with the toe of my
shoe, wondering greatly how it came to be just there. It was cut--not
torn--so it could not have been dropped there by any wild beast, but
by some person. As I looked attentively at it, some white substance,
lying half hidden in a deep cleft in the meat, attracted my attention.
I stood still for a long time, studying that bit of beef. That the
white substance was poison I had not a doubt. If some one were anxious
to kill a dog--like a flash the recollection of Guard's indiscreet
charge on Mr. Horton's horse, and of Mr. Horton's speechless rage
thereat, came to my mind. An attempt to poison Guard did not strike
me, at the moment, as an act indicating anything more than a
determination to be revenged on him for the trouble that he
had already given Mr. Horton. Afterward, I understood its full
significance. A little beyond the spot where I found the poisoned
meat, well out of sight from the house, or of any chance passers-by,
I came to a tree under which a horse had evidently been recently
tethered, and that, too, for a long time. I wondered at this, for,
among us, people seldom tether a horse; it is considered an essential
part of a cow pony's training to learn to remain long in one place
without being fastened in any way. Still, as I reflected, the matter
was not one to cause wonder. The ground was torn and trampled by the
impatient, pawing hoofs, and I knew very well what horse it was that,
for his recent sins, might have been compelled to do penance in this
manner.

Something over half a mile from our house there was a break in the
hills--the beginning of a long and dark ravine that, trending
southward, led, if one cared to traverse it, in a tolerably straight
course to the far lower end of the valley, near where the Hortons
lived.

It was an uncanny place--dark at all times, as well as damp, and so
uninviting in its wildness, even as a short cut to a brighter place,
that it was very seldom entered. As I stood on the hill above it,
peering down into its shadows, a great longing took possession of me
to know whether Mr. Horton had really gone to town as he threatened.
Besides, if Guard were really standing sentinel over a wildcat, no
more promising place to se