ver in doubt, dug out this compass-flower, till the country
dipped and Pine Creek lay below.

[Illustration]

There was good camping here, the very spot indeed where, fifteen years
before, Butler had camped on his Loneland Journey; but now the
blizzard had ceased, so Yan spent the day hunting without seeing a
track, and he spent the night as before, wishing that nature had been
kinder to him in the matter of fur. During that first lone night his
face and toes had been frozen and now bore burning sores. But still he
kept on the chase, for something within had told him that the Grail
was surely near. Next day a strange, unreasoning guess sent him east
across the creek in a deerless-looking barren land. Within half a mile
he came on dim tracks made lately in the storm. He followed, and soon
found where six deer had lain at rest, and among them a great, broad
bed and a giant track that only one could have made. The track was
almost fresh, the sign unfrozen still. "Within a mile," he thought.
But within a hundred yards there loomed up on a fog-wrapped hillside
five heads with ears regardant, and at that moment, too, there rose up
from the snowy top a great form like a blasted trunk with two dead
boughs still on. But they had seen him first, and before the deadly
gun could play, six beacons waved and a friendly hill had screened
them from its power.

[Illustration]

The Sandhill Stag had gathered his brood again, yet now that the
murderer was on the track once more, he scattered them as before. But
there was only one track for Yan.

At last the chase led away to the great dip of Pine Creek--a mile-wide
flat, with a long, dense thicket down the middle.

"There is where he is hiding and watching now, but there he will not
rest," said the something within, and Yan kept out of sight and
watched; after half an hour a dark spot left the willow belt and
wandered up the farther hill. When he was well out of sight over the
hill Yan ran across the valley and stalked around to get the trail on
the down-wind side. He found it, and there learned that the Stag was
as wise as he--he had climbed a good lookout and watched his back
trail, then seeing Yan crossing the flat, his track went swiftly
bounding, bounding--.

[Illustration: "Scanned the White World for his Foe."]

The Stag knew just how things stood; a single match to a finish now,
and he led away for a new region. But Yan was learning something he
had often heard--that th