es. Again
Dick showed him the hat, and again Jan sniffed. Then back to earth went
his muzzle, and all unseeing he brought up against the yard gate with a
sudden deep bay.

"That's the tracking note," said Dick, with suppressed eagerness. "We'd
better get our horses, sir."

Through the town streets Jan faltered only twice or thrice, and then not
for long. Within ten minutes he was on the open prairie, heading
northwestward, as for Long Lake, his pace steady and increasing now, his
deep-flewed muzzle low to the ground.

For more than two-and-twenty miles Jan loped along over the cocolike
dust of the trail, and never faltered once save at the side of a little
slough, where the two horsemen in his rear spent a few anxious minutes
while Jan paced this way and that, with indecision showing in each
movement of his massive head. And then, again with a rich deep bay--a
note of reassurance for the horseman, and of doom for a fugitive, if
such an one could have heard it--Jan was off again on the trail,
closely, but by no means hurryingly, followed by the captain and Dick.

In the twenty-second mile Jan brought his followers to the door of a
settler's little two-roomed shack, and then, within the minute, was off
again along the side of a half-mile stretch of wheat. Captain Arnutt
dismounted for a moment to speak to a woman who came to the door. Not
half an hour earlier she said, she had given a drink of tea and some
bread and meat to a dark, thin man with a red handkerchief tied over his
head. "A Dago he was," she said. And Captain Arnutt bit hard on one end
of his mustache as he thanked the woman, mounted again, and galloped off
after Dick and Jan.

As he rode, the captain turned back the flap of his magazine-pistol
holster; but the precaution was not needed. Jan was traveling at the
gallop now, and the height of his muzzle from the ground showed clearly
that he was on a warm trail, which, for such nostrils as his, required
no holding at all.

It was under the lee of a heap of last year's wheat-straw that Jan came
to the end of his trail; his fore feet planted hard in the dust before
him, his head well lifted, his jaws parted to give free passage to the
deep, bell-like call of his baying. The man with the red 'kerchief tied
over his head was evidently roused from sleep by Jan, and though the
hound showed no sign of molesting him, yet must he have formed a
terrifying picture for the newly opened eyes of the Italian. Almost