h him, and he forgot the Stewarts. And suddenly he
felt absolutely free, alone, with nothing behind to remember, with wild,
thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn of a
timber wolf wailed in with the wind. Seldom had he heard the cry of one
of those night wanderers. There was nothing like it--no sound like it to
fix in the lone camper's heart the great solitude and the wild.

II

In the early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were
shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb
that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming
them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, and sweet with frosty
fragrance.

Daylight came while he was in the midst of his morning meal. A white
frost covered the ground and crackled under his feet as he went out to
bring in the horses. He saw fresh deer tracks. Then he went back to camp
for his rifle. Keeping a sharp lookout for game, he continued his search
for the horses.

The forest was open and parklike. There were no fallen trees or
evidences of fire. Presently he came to a wide glade in the midst of
which Nagger and the pack mustang were grazing with a herd of deer. The
size of the latter amazed Slone. The deer he had hunted back on the
Sevier range were much smaller than these. Evidently these were mule
deer, closely allied to the elk. They were so tame they stood facing him
curiously, with long ears erect. It was sheer murder to kill a deer
standing and watching like that, but Slone was out of meat and hungry
and facing a long, hard trip. He shot a buck, which leaped spasmodically
away, trying to follow the herd, and fell at the edge of the glade.
Slone cut out a haunch, and then, catching the horses, he returned to
camp, where he packed and saddled, and at once rode out on the dim
trail.

The wilderness of the country he was entering was evident in the fact
that as he passed the glade where he had shot the deer a few minutes
before, there were coyotes quarreling over the carcass.

Slone could see ahead and on each side several hundred yards, and
presently he ascertained that the forest floor was not so level as he
had supposed. He had entered a valley or was traversing a wide, gently
sloping pass. He went through thickets of juniper, and had to go around
clumps of quaking asp. The pines grew larger and farther apart. Cedars
and pinyons had been left behind, and he had met with no silver spruce