t him. He knew the Night People of the
deep forests were awake. Softly padded, clawed, sharp-beaked and
feathered--the prowlers of darkness were on the move. With the stillness
of shadows they were stealing through the moonlit corridors of the
wilderness, or hovering gray-winged and ghostly in the ambuscades of the
treetops, eager to waylay and kill, hungering for the flesh and blood
of creatures weaker than themselves. Peter knew. Both heritage and
experience warned him. And he watched the shadows, and sniffed the air,
and kept his fangs half bared and ready as he followed the trail of
McKay.

He was not stirred by the impulse of adventure alone. Without the
finesse of what man might charitably call reason in a beast, he had
sensed a responsibility. It was present in the closely drawn strips
of faded cloth about his neck. It was, in a way, a part of the girl
herself, a part of her flesh and blood, a part of her spirit--something
vital to her and dependent upon him. He was ready to guard it with every
instinct of caution and every ounce of courage there was in him. And
to protect it meant to fight. That was the first law of his breed,
the primal warning which came to him through the red blood of many
generations of wilderness forefathers. So he listened, and he watched,
and his blood pounded hot in his veins as he followed the footprints in
the trail. A bit of brush, swinging suddenly free from where it had been
prisoned by the storm, drew a snarl from him as he faced the sound with
the quickness of a cat. A gray streak, passing swiftly over the trail
ahead of him, stirred a low growl in his throat. It was a lynx, and for
a space Peter paused, and then sped soft-footed past the moon-lit spot
where the stiletto-clawed menace of the woods had passed.

Now that he was alone, and no longer accompanied by a human presence
whose footsteps and scent held the wild things aloof and still, Peter
felt nearer and nearer to him the beat and stir of life. Powerful beaks,
instead of remaining closed and without sound, snapped and hissed at
him as the big gray owls watched his passing. He heard the rustling of
brush, soft as the stir of a woman's dress, where living things were
secretly moving, and he heard the louder crash of clumsy and piggish
feet, and caught the strong scent of a porcupine as it waddled to its
midnight lunch of poplar bark. Then the trail ended, and Jolly Roger's
scent led into the pathless forest, with its shifti