n?--here where the cold, brawling
streams smoked in the rank air; where black crags crouched, watching
the hunting--here in these awful deeps, shunned by the deer, unhaunted
by wolf and panther--depths fit only for the monstrous terror that came
out of them, and now, wounded, and cold heart pulsing terror, was
scrambling back again into the dense and dreadful twilight of eternal
shadow-land.

One by one their pack-laden horses fell out exhausted; and we found
them, heads hanging, quivering and panting beside the reeking trail;
one by one their gaunt cattle, mired in bog and swamp, entangled in
windfalls, greeted us, bellowing piteously as we passed. The forest
itself fought for us, reaching out to jerk wheels from axle, bringing
wagon and team down crashing. Their dead lay everywhere uncared for,
even unscalped and unrobbed in the bruised and trampled path of flight;
clothing, arms, provisions were scattered pell-mell on every side; and
now at length, hour after hour, as we headed them back from trail and
highway, and blocked them from their boats at Oneida Lake, driving,
forcing, scourging them straight into the black jaws of a hungry
wilderness, we began to pass their wounded--ghastly, bloody, ragged
things, scarce animate, save for the dying brilliancy of their hollowed
eyes.

On, on, hotfoot through the rain along the smoking trail; twilight by
day, depthless darkness by night, where we lay panting in starless
obscurity, listening to the giant winds of the wilderness--vast,
resistless, illimitable winds flowing steadily through the unseen and
naked crests of forests, colder and ever colder they blew, heralding
the trampling blasts of winter, charging us from the north.

On the fifth day it began to snow at dawn. Little ragged flakes
winnowed through the clusters of scarlet maple-leaves, sifted among the
black pines, coming faster and thicker, driving in slanting, whirling
flight across the trail. In an hour the moss was white; crimson sprays
of moose-bush bent, weighted with snow and scarlet berries; the
hurrying streams ran dark and somber in their channels between
dead-white banks; swamps turned blacker for the silvery setting; the
flakes grew larger, pelting in steady, thickening torrents from the
clouds as we came into a clearing called Jerseyfield, on the north side
of Canada Creek; and here at last we were met by a crackling roar from
a hundred rifles.

The Red Beast was at bay!

Up and down, through th