ut him as does a great prairie
owl, the interminably long hours of his second night dragged by.

"The beginning of the end," he soliloquized, when once more it was light
enough so that standing he could see the earth at his feet. Well he knew
that ere this the other horse was eliminated from the chase--that it was
now man against man. God! how his joints ached when he stretched
them!--how his muscles pained at the slightest motion! He ground his
teeth when he first began to walk, and hobbled like a rheumatic cripple;
but within a half-hour tenacity had won, and the relentless jog-trot of
the interrupted line was measuring off the miles anew.

The chase was nearing an end. Long ere noon, in the distance toward
which he was heading, Blair detected a brown dot against the white.
Steadily, as he advanced, it resolved itself into the thing he had
expected, and stood revealed before him, the centre of a horribly
legible page, the last page in the biography of a noble horse. Let us
pass it by: Ben did, looking the other way. But a new and terrible
vitality possessed him. His weariness left him, as pain passes under an
opiate. He did not pause to eat, to drink. Tireless as a waterfall,
watchful as a hawk, he jogged on, on, a mile--two miles--five--came to a
rise in the great roll of the lands--stopped, his heart suddenly
pounding the walls of his chest. Before him, not half a mile away,
moving slowly westward, was the diminutive black shape of a man
travelling afoot!

Instantly the primal hunting instinct of the Anglo-Saxon awoke in the
lank Benjamin. The incomparable fascination which makes man-hunting the
sport supreme of all ages gripped him tight. The stealthy cunning of a
savage became on the moment his. A plan of ambush, one which could
scarcely fail, flashed into his mind. The trail of the divide narrowing
now, stretched for miles and miles straight before them. That black
figure would scarcely leave it. The pursuer had but to make a great
detour, get far in advance, find a point of concealment, and wait.

Swift as thought was action. Back on his trail until he was out of sight
went Ben Blair; then, turning to his right, he made straight for the
concealing bed of Bad River. Once there, he turned west again, following
the winding course of the stream toward its source. Faster than ever he
moved, the pat-pat of his feet on the deadening snow drowning the sound
of the great breaths he drew into his lungs and sent whistli