standing apart some little distance from the black wall.

"That's the dead horse," whispered Dale. "An' if you watch close you can
see the coyotes. They're gray an' they move.... Can't you hear them?"

Helen's excited ears, so full of throbs and imaginings, presently
registered low snaps and snarls. Bo gave her arm a squeeze.

"I hear them. They're fighting. Oh, gee!" she panted, and drew a long,
full breath of unutterable excitement.

"Keep quiet now an' watch an' listen," said the hunter.

Slowly the black, ragged forest-line seemed to grow blacker and lift;
slowly the gray neck of park lightened under some invisible influence;
slowly the stars paled and the sky filled over. Somewhere the moon was
rising. And slowly that vague blurred patch grew a little clearer.

Through the tips of the spruce, now seen to be rather close at hand,
shone a slender, silver crescent moon, darkening, hiding, shining again,
climbing until its exquisite sickle-point topped the trees, and then,
magically, it cleared them, radiant and cold. While the eastern black
wall shaded still blacker, the park blanched and the border-line
opposite began to stand out as trees.

"Look! Look!" cried Bo, very low and fearfully, as she pointed.

"Not so loud," whispered Dale.

"But I see something!"

"Keep quiet," he admonished.

Helen, in the direction Bo pointed, could not see anything but
moon-blanched bare ground, rising close at hand to a little ridge.

"Lie still," whispered Dale. "I'm goin' to crawl around to get a look
from another angle. I'll be right back."

He moved noiselessly backward and disappeared. With him gone, Helen felt
a palpitating of her heart and a prickling of her skin.

"Oh, my! Nell! Look!" whispered Bo, in fright. "I know I saw something."

On top of the little ridge a round object moved slowly, getting farther
out into the light. Helen watched with suspended breath. It moved out
to be silhouetted against the sky--apparently a huge, round, bristling
animal, frosty in color. One instant it seemed huge--the next
small--then close at hand--and far away. It swerved to come directly
toward them. Suddenly Helen realized that the beast was not a dozen
yards distant. She was just beginning a new experience--a real
and horrifying terror in which her blood curdled, her heart gave a
tremendous leap and then stood still, and she wanted to fly, but was
rooted to the spot--when Dale returned to her side.

"That's a pesky por