s dominant traits. But he was kind,
too. His attitude toward the Little People met with on the trail--the
little, scurrying folk--was particularly appealing: like that of a
strong man toward children. She saw that he was sympathetic,
instinctively chivalrous; and she got past his barrier of reserve as few
living beings had ever done before.

She saw at once that he was an expert horseman. Riding a half-broken
mustang over the winding, brush-grown moose trails of the North is not
like cantering a thoroughbred along a park avenue, and a certain amount
of difficulty is the rule rather than the exception; but he controlled
his animal as no man of her acquaintance had ever done. He rode a bay
mare that was not, by a long way, the most reliable piece of horseflesh
McClurg owned, yet she gave him the best she had in her, scrambling with
a burst of energy on the pitches, leaping the logs, battling the mires,
and obeying his every wish. The joy of the Northern trails depends
largely upon the service rendered by the horse between one's knees, and
Ben knew it to the full.

Before the first two hours were past Beatrice found herself thrilling
with admiration at Ben's woodcraft. Not only by experience but by
instinct and character he was wholly fitted for life in the waste
places. Just as some artists are born with the soul of music, he had
come to the earth with the Red Gods at his beck and call; the spirit of
the wild things seemed to move in his being. She didn't wholly
understand. She only knew that this man, newly come from "The States,"
riding so straight and talking so gaily behind her, had qualities native
to the forest that were lacking not only in her, but in such men as her
father and Ray Brent. Seemingly he had inherited straight from the
youngest days of the earth those traits by which aboriginal man
conquered the wild.

The first real manifestation of this truth occurred soon after they
reached the bank of Poor Man's creek. All at once he had shouted at her
and told her to stop her horse. She drew up and turned in her saddle,
questioning.

"There's something stirring in the thicket beside you. Don't you hear
him?"

Beatrice had sharp ears, but she strained in vain for the sound that,
forty feet farther distant, Ben heard easily. She shook her head, firmly
believing his imagination had led him astray. But an instant later a
coyote--one of those gray skulkers whose waging cries at twilight every
woodfarer knows--s