nto a mental sympathy and understanding with
that quarry. To analyze what an outlaw would do under certain
conditions and with certain environments and racial inheritances behind
him was to Kent the premier move in the thrilling game. He had evolved
rules of great importance for himself, but always he had worked them
out from the vantage point of the huntsman. Now he began to turn them
around. He, James Kent, was no longer the hunter, but the hunted, and
all the tricks which he had mastered must now be worked the other way.
His woodcraft, his cunning, the fine points he had learned of the game
of one-against-one would avail him but little when it came to the
witness chair and a trial.

The open window was his first inspiration. Adventure had been the blood
of his life. And out there, behind the green forests rolling away like
the billows of an ocean, lay the greatest adventure of all. Once in
those beloved forests covering almost the half of a continent, he would
be willing to die if the world beat him. He could see himself playing
the game of the hunted as no other man had ever played it before. Let
him once have his guns and his freedom, with all that world waiting for
him--

Eagerness gleamed in his eyes, and then, slowly, it died out. The open
window, after all, was but a mockery. He rolled sideways from his bed
and partly balanced himself on his feet. The effort made him dizzy. He
doubted if he could have walked a hundred yards after climbing through
the window. Instantly another thought leaped into his brain. His head
was clearing. He swayed across the room and back again, the first time
he had been on his feet since the half-breed's bullet had laid him out.
He would fool Cardigan. He would fool Kedsty. As he recovered his
strength, he would keep it to himself. He would play sick man to the
limit, and then some night he would take advantage of the open window!

The thought thrilled him as no other thing in the world had ever
thrilled him before. For the first time he sensed the vast difference
between the hunter and the hunted, between the man who played the game
of life and death alone and the one who played it with the Law and all
its might behind him. To hunt was thrilling. To be hunted was more
thrilling. Every nerve in his body tingled. A different kind of fire
burned in his brain. He was the creature who was at bay. The other
fellow was the hunter now.

He went back to the window and leaned far out. He l