get away
from th' stream, and he'll cover his trail. Still, they's a moon. I
don't believe anybody could do it but you, Dick. If you don't make her,
why there ain't nothing lost. We'll just have to camp down here an' go
to trapping until he gets sick of hanging around."

So it was agreed. Dick, under stress of danger, was now a changed man.
What he lacked in experience and the power to synthesise, he more than
made up in the perfection of his senses and a certain natural instinct
of the woods. He was a better trailer than Sam, his eyesight was keener,
his hearing more acute, his sense of smell finer, his every nerve alive
and tingling in vibrant unison with the life about him. Where Sam
laboriously arrived by the aid of his forty years' knowledge, the
younger man leaped by the swift indirection of an Indian--or a woman.
Had he only possessed, as did Bolton, a keen brain as well as keen
higher instincts, he would have been marvellous.

The old man sat near the camp-fire after dark that night sure that
Herron was even then conducting the affair better than he could have
done himself. He had confidence. No faintest indication,--even in the
uncertainty of moonlight through the trees,--that a man had left the
river would escape the young man's minute inspection. And in the search
no twig would snap under those soft-moccasined feet; no betraying
motion of brush or brake warn the man he sought. Dick's woodcraft of
that sort was absolute; just as Sam Bolton's woodcraft also was
absolute--of its sort. It might be long, but the result was
certain,--unless the Indian himself suspected.

Dick had taken his rifle.

"You know," Sam reminded him, significantly, "we don't really need that
Injun."

"I know," Dick had replied, grimly.

Now Sam Bolton sat near the fire waiting for the sound of a shot. From
time to time he spread his gnarled, carved-mahogany hands to the blaze.
Under his narrow hat his kindly gray-blue eyes, wrinkled at the corners
with speculation and good humour, gazed unblinking into the light. As
always he smoked.

Time went on. The moon climbed, then descended again. Finally it shone
almost horizontally through the tree-trunks, growing larger and larger
until its field was crackled across with a frostwork of twigs and
leaves. By and by it reached the edge of a hill-bank, visible through an
opening, and paused. It had become huge, gigantic, big with mystery. A
wolf sat directly before it, silhouetted sharply.