l contrast to the dark-green, rough, and rugged ridges. Both
open senaca and dense wooded ridge showed to his quick eye an abundance
of game. The cracking of twigs and disappearing flash of gray among the
spruces, a round black lumbering object, a twittering in the brush,
and stealthy steps, were all easy signs for Dale to read. Once, as he
noiselessly emerged into a little glade, he espied a red fox stalking
some quarry, which, as he advanced, proved to be a flock of partridges.
They whirred up, brushing the branches, and the fox trotted away. In
every senaca Dale encountered wild turkeys feeding on the seeds of the
high grass.

It had always been his custom, on his visits to Pine, to kill and
pack fresh meat down to several old friends, who were glad to give him
lodging. And, hurried though he was now, he did not intend to make an
exception of this trip.

At length he got down into the pine belt, where the great, gnarled,
yellow trees soared aloft, stately, and aloof from one another, and the
ground was a brown, odorous, springy mat of pine-needles, level as a
floor. Squirrels watched him from all around, scurrying away at his
near approach--tiny, brown, light-striped squirrels, and larger ones,
russet-colored, and the splendid dark-grays with their white bushy tails
and plumed ears.

This belt of pine ended abruptly upon wide, gray, rolling, open land,
almost like a prairie, with foot-hills lifting near and far, and the
red-gold blaze of aspen thickets catching the morning sun. Here Dale
flushed a flock of wild turkeys, upward of forty in number, and their
subdued color of gray flecked with white, and graceful, sleek build,
showed them to be hens. There was not a gobbler in the flock. They began
to run pell-mell out into the grass, until only their heads appeared
bobbing along, and finally disappeared. Dale caught a glimpse of
skulking coyotes that evidently had been stalking the turkeys, and as
they saw him and darted into the timber he took a quick shot at the
hindmost. His bullet struck low, as he had meant it to, but too low, and
the coyote got only a dusting of earth and pine-needles thrown up into
his face. This frightened him so that he leaped aside blindly to butt
into a tree, rolled over, gained his feet, and then the cover of the
forest. Dale was amused at this. His hand was against all the predatory
beasts of the forest, though he had learned that lion and bear and wolf
and fox were all as necessary to