uld have a fair chance. This better footing
never led him nearer the enemy, for it is well known that the one awaiting
has the advantage.

Some days Wahb felt so ill that it would have been madness to have staked
everything on a fight, and when he felt well or a little better, the
stranger seemed to keep away.

[Illustration]

Wahb soon found that the stranger's track was most often on the Warhouse
and the west slope of the Piney, the very best feeding-grounds. To avoid
these when he did not feel equal to fighting was only natural, and as he
was always in more or less pain now, it amounted to abandoning to the
stranger the best part of the range.

[Illustration]

Weeks went by. Wahb had meant to go back to his bath, but he never did. His
pains grew worse; he was now crippled in his right shoulder as well as in
his hind leg.

The long strain of waiting for the fight begot anxiety, that grew to be
apprehension, which, with the sapping of his strength, was breaking down
his courage, as it always must when courage is founded on muscular force.
His daily care now was not to meet and fight the invader, but to avoid him
till he felt better.

Thus that first little retreat grew into one long retreat. Wahb had to go
farther and farther down the Piney to avoid an encounter. He was daily
worse fed, and as the weeks went by was daily less able to crush a foe.

He was living and hiding at last on the Lower Piney--the very place where
once his Mother had brought him with his little brothers. The life he led
now was much like the one he had led after that dark day. Perhaps for the
same reason. If he had had a family of his own all might have been
different. As he limped along one morning, seeking among the barren aspen
groves for a few roots, or the wormy partridge-berries that were too poor
to interest the Squirrel and the Grouse, he heard a stone rattle down the
western slope into the woods, and, a little later, on the wind was borne
the dreaded taint. He waded through the ice-cold Piney,--once he would have
leaped it,--and the chill water sent through and up each great hairy limb
keen pains that seemed to reach his very life. He was retreating
again--which way? There seemed but one way now--toward the new ranch-house.

[Illustration]

But there were signs of stir about it long before he was near enough to be
seen. His nose, his trustiest friend, said, "Turn, turn and seek the
hills," and turn he did even at