ng where they had been unsaddled. Morning, however,
discovered them grazing on the long, bleached grass. John shook his head
when he looked at them.

"You reckoned to make Pine by nightfall. How far is it--the way you'll
go?"

"Fifty mile or thereabouts," replied Dale.

"Wal, we can't ride it on them critters."

"John, we'd do more than that if we had to."

They were saddled and on the move before sunrise, leaving snow and bog
behind. Level parks and level forests led one after another to long
slopes and steep descents, all growing sunnier and greener as the
altitude diminished. Squirrels and grouse, turkeys and deer, and less
tame denizens of the forest grew more abundant as the travel advanced.
In this game zone, however, Dale had trouble with Tom. The cougar had to
be watched and called often to keep him off of trails.

"Tom doesn't like a long trip," said Dale. "But I'm goin' to take him.
Some way or other he may come in handy."

"Sic him onto Beasley's gang," replied John. "Some men are powerful
scared of cougars. But I never was."

"Nor me. Though I've had cougars give me a darn uncanny feelin'."

The men talked but little. Dale led the way, with Tom trotting
noiselessly beside his horse. John followed close behind. They loped the
horses across parks, trotted through the forests, walked slow up
what few inclines they met, and slid down the soft, wet, pine-matted
descents. So they averaged from six to eight miles an hour. The horses
held up well under that steady travel, and this without any rest at
noon.

Dale seemed to feel himself in an emotional trance. Yet, despite this,
the same old sensorial perceptions crowded thick and fast upon him,
strangely sweet and vivid after the past dead months when neither sun
nor wind nor cloud nor scent of pine nor anything in nature could stir
him. His mind, his heart, his soul seemed steeped in an intoxicating
wine of expectation, while his eyes and ears and nose had never been
keener to register the facts of the forest-land. He saw the black thing
far ahead that resembled a burned stump, but he knew was a bear before
it vanished; he saw gray flash of deer and wolf and coyote, and the red
of fox, and the small, wary heads of old gobblers just sticking above
the grass; and he saw deep tracks of game as well as the slow-rising
blades of bluebells where some soft-footed beast had just trod. And he
heard the melancholy notes of birds, the twitter of grouse, the sough o