ket of green tea, and a little bag of sugar from a strip
of hide. The piece of pork was very small, and a good deal of it
apparently bad. Then he laughed curiously.

"It seems to me that the sooner I can get south and put in my record
the less hungry I'm likely to be," he said. "It would be kind of
convenient if I could find a deer. I wonder just how far back the
other man is?"

CHAPTER XIX

FOUL PLAY

Alton looked for a deer on the morrow and during several days that
followed without finding it. There are tracts of the mountain province
which for no apparent reason are almost devoid of animal life, while
the deer are also addicted to travelling south towards valleys swept by
the warm Chinook wind before the approach of winter. Meanwhile, though
he husbanded it, the piece of pork grew rapidly smaller, and Alton
hungry, while there were times when he wondered somewhat anxiously when
he would find his comrades. It was unpleasantly possible that he might
miss them, which would have been especially unfortunate, because, as
every adult citizen is entitled to claim so many feet of frontage on
unrecorded mineral land which pertains to the Crown, it appeared
advisable that they should have the opportunity of staking off two more
claims, and his provisions were almost exhausted.

Thus it came about that one evening he tramped somewhat dejectedly back
towards his camp through a strip of thinner forest high up on the hill.
There was a sting of frost in the air and a little snow beneath his
feet, while his belt was girded about him tightly and his fingers
stiffened on the rifle-barrel. Alton had eaten nothing since early
morning, and very little then, while the fashion in which he stumbled
through the thickets and amidst the fern conveyed a hint of exhaustion.
It was, however, fortunate that a twig snapped noisily beneath him,
because the deer are difficult to see in their sylvan home, and the
sound was answered by a crackle that roused him to eager attention.

Alton, knowing there was a big fir behind him, stood very still,
glancing about him without a movement of his head, until he made out
what might have been a forked twig rising above the thicket. He did
not, however, think it was, and gazing more intently fancied he saw a
patch of something that was not the fern. He knew that at the first
movement it would be gone, and there was no time for any fine alignment
of the sights of the rifle, so leaning sligh