this range and the hunter was said to have killed the
male. If these were the tracks of the tigress she certainly was not
badly hurt. There wasn't the overpressure of a single pad to indicate
her favouring a muscle anywhere. And this couldn't have been the track
of anything but a mature beast--the finished print of a perfect
specimen.

"That hunter didn't tell it all, Nels, or else he didn't do it all,"
Skag remarked. "We started out to find a sick tigress and a hamper of
neglected babies. I'm not saying we won't find that much. The thing
is, we may find more."

Nels was already five yards away across the pebbly hollow, waiting for
Skag to follow along the ravine. Not a sign of a track that human eye
could detect after that--straight, dry, stony nullah bed, deeply
shadowed from the narrow walls and stretching ahead apparently for
miles. At least it was cool work; the sun would not touch the floor of
the fissure for hours yet. Nels never faltered. His pace gradually
quickened until Skag softly called. The Dane would remember for
fifteen or twenty minutes, when Skag, again finding that he had to step
uncomfortably fast to keep up, would laughingly call a check. The man
was watching the walls and the coverts of broken rock, and Nels' speed,
if left alone, altogether occupied his outer faculties.

It was eleven in the forenoon and Skag reckoned they must be close to
the Nerbudda when Nels halted--even bristled a bit, his broad black
muzzle quivering and held aloft. Skag came up softly and stood close.
He touched his finger to his tongue and drew a moist line under his
nostrils, trying to get the message that Nels was working with so
obviously. Presently an almost noiseless chuckle came from the man,
and he touched Nels' shoulder as if to say that he had it too. The
thing had come unexpectedly--the faintest possible taint of a lair.

They would have passed it a hundred times if it had not been for the
scent. The silence was absolute and the walls of the fissure
apparently as unbroken as usual. No human eyes would have noted the
wear of pads upon the stones, and one had to pass and look back to see
the cleft in the walls of the ravine, far above the high-water mark,
which formed the door of significant meaning for the man. Nels hadn't
seen this much, but he couldn't miss now. He nosed the pebbles again
and made an abrupt turn to the right. They climbed to the rocks near
the entrance. The taint was un