the eagerness of his muscles to
the slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a single garment--a
ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a hole in the middle through which
he had thrust his head. He could not have been more than twelve years
old. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail of a
pig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.

On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about his
neck on a thong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. He
was as brown as a berry, and walked softly, with almost a catlike tread.
In marked contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes--blue, deep
blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore into
aft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelled
things, as well, his distended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brain
an endless series of messages from the outside world. Also, his hearing
was acute, and had been so trained that it operated automatically.
Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparent
quiet--heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds--whether
they were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees and
gnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted to him only in
lulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful of
earth into the entrance of his hole.

Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given him
a simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man, touching
him, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of the top of the
embankment, arose a crackling sound, and the boy's gaze was fixed on the
tops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed into
view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did not
like them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow to
the bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removed
his eyes from the bear.

[Illustration: Slowly he pulled the bowstring taut 020]

The old man peered from under his green leaf at the danger, and stood as
quietly as the boy. For a few seconds this mutual scrutinizing went
on; then, the bear betraying a growing irritability, the boy, with a
movement of his head, indicated that the old man must step aside from
the trail and go down the embankment. The boy followed, going backward,
still holding the bow taut and ready. They waited till a cra