art and run
off.

Next day no dog was needed to trail Queen. Fog and low-drifting clouds
in the forest and a misty rain had put the rustler off his bearings. He
was lost, and showed that he realized it. Strange how a matured man,
fighter of a hundred battles, steeped in bloodshed, and on his last
stand, should grow panic-stricken upon being lost! So Jean Isbel read
the signs of the trail.

Queen circled and wandered through the foggy, dripping forest until he
headed down into a canyon. It was one that notched the Rim and led
down and down, mile after mile into the Basin. Not soon had Queen
discovered his mistake. When he did do so, night overtook him.

The weather cleared before morning. Red and bright the sun burst out
of the east to flood that low basin land with light. Jean found that
Queen had traveled on and on, hoping, no doubt, to regain what he had
lost. But in the darkness he had climbed to the manzanita slopes
instead of back up the canyon. And here he had fought the hold of that
strange brush of Spanish name until he fell exhausted.

Surely Queen would make his stand and wait somewhere in this devilish
thicket for Jean to catch up with him. Many and many a place Jean
would have chosen had he been in Queen's place. Many a rock and dense
thicket Jean circled or approached with extreme care. Manzanita grew
in patches that were impenetrable except for a small animal. The brush
was a few feet high, seldom so high that Jean could not look over it,
and of a beautiful appearance, having glossy, small leaves, a golden
berry, and branches of dark-red color. These branches were tough and
unbendable. Every bush, almost, had low branches that were dead, hard
as steel, sharp as thorns, as clutching as cactus. Progress was
possible only by endless detours to find the half-closed aisles between
patches, or else by crashing through with main strength or walking
right over the tops. Jean preferred this last method, not because it
was the easiest, but for the reason that he could see ahead so much
farther. So he literally walked across the tips of the manzanita brush.
Often he fell through and had to step up again; many a branch broke
with him, letting him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork
to fork, on branch after branch, with balance of an Indian and the
patience of a man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable.

On that south slope under the Rim the sun beat down hot. There was no
bre