at struck him!" exclaimed Copple, and he laid hold of the
deer and hauled it out of the edge of the thicket. "Fine an' fat.
Venison for camp, boys. One of you go after the horses an' the other
help me hang him up."

VI

I had been riding eastward of Beaver Dam Canyon with Haught, and we had
parted up on the ridge, he to go down a ravine leading to his camp, and
I to linger a while longer up there in the Indian-summer woods, so full
of gold and silence and fragrance on that October afternoon.

The trail gradually drew me onward and downward, and at length I came
out into a narrow open park lined by spruce trees. Suddenly Don Carlos
shot up his ears. I had not ridden him for days and he appeared more
than usually spirited. He saw or heard something. I held him in, and
after a moment I dismounted and drew my rifle. A crashing in brush
somewhere near at hand excited me. Peering all around I tried to locate
cause for the sound. Again my ear caught a violent swishing of brush
accompanied by a snapping of twigs. This time I cocked my rifle. Don
Carlos snorted. After another circling swift gaze it dawned upon me that
the sound came from overhead.

I looked into this tree and that, suddenly to have my gaze arrested by a
threshing commotion in the very top of a lofty spruce. I saw a dark form
moving against a background of blue sky. Instantly I thought it must be
a lynx and was about to raise my rifle when a voice as from the very
clouds utterly astounded me. I gasped in my astonishment. Was I
dreaming? But violent threshings and whacks from the tree-top absolutely
assured me that I was neither dreaming nor out of my head. "I get
you--whee!" shouted the voice. There was a man up in the swaying top of
that spruce and he was no other than Takahashi. For a moment I could not
find my voice. Then I shouted:

"Hey up there, George! What in the world are you doing? I came near
shooting you."

"Aw hullo!--I come down now," replied Takahashi.

I had seen both lynx and lion climb down out of a tree, but nothing
except a squirrel could ever have beaten Takahashi. The spruce was fully
one hundred and fifty feet high; and unless I made a great mistake the
Jap descended in two minutes. He grinned from ear to ear.

"I no see you--no hear," he said. "You take me for big cat?"

"Yes, George, and I might have shot you. What were you doing up there?"

Takahashi brushed the needles and bark from his clothes. "I go out with
little gun y