cquaintance with the hounds. Haught had not
been able to secure more than two new hounds, and these named Rock and
Buck were still unknown quantities.

Old Dan remembered me, and my heart warmed to the old gladiator. He was
a very big, large-boned hound, gray with age and wrinkled and lame, and
bleary-eyed. Dan was too old to be put on trails, or at least to be made
chase bear. He loved a camp-fire, and would almost sit in the flames.
This fact, and the way he would beg for a morsel to eat, had endeared
him to me.

Old Tom was somewhat smaller and leaner than Dan, yet resembled him
enough to deceive us at times. Tom was gray, too, and had crinkly ears,
and many other honorable battle-scars. Tom was not quite so friendly as
Dan; in fact he had more dignity. Still neither hound was ever
demonstrative except upon sight of his master. Haught told me that if
Dan and Tom saw him shoot at a deer they would chase it till they
dropped; accordingly he never shot at anything except bear and lion when
he had these hounds with him.

Sue was the best hound in the pack, as she still had, in spite of years
of service, a good deal of speed and fight left in her. She was a slim,
dark brown hound with fine and very long ears. Rock, one of the new
hounds from Kentucky, was white and black, and had remarkably large,
clear and beautiful eyes, almost human in expression. I could not
account for the fact that I suspected Rock was a deer chaser. Buck, the
other hound from Kentucky, was no longer young; he had a stump tail; his
color was a little yellow with dark spots, and he had a hang-dog head
and distrustful eye. I made certain that Buck had never had any friends,
for he did not understand kindness. Nor had he ever had enough to eat.
He stayed away from the rest of the pack and growled fiercely when a pup
came near him. I tried to make friends with him, but found that I would
not have an easy task.

Kaiser Bill was one of the pups, black in color, a long, lean,
hungry-looking dog, and crazy. He had not grown any in a year, either in
body or intelligence. I remembered how he would yelp just to hear
himself and run any kind of a trail--how he would be the first to quit
and come back. And if any one fired a gun near him he would run like a
scared deer.

To be fair to Kaiser Bill the other pups were not much better. Trailer
and Big Foot were young still, and about all they could do was to run
and howl.

If, however, they got off right on