At the top of the next hill, not having heard it while he crashed
through the undergrowth of the bottom, he stopped again, panting. Though
still far away and faint, it was unmistakable now, and there was in the
sound a note of melancholy triumph and joy.

The shrewdness of all hunted animals took hold of the old man's nature.
He ran half a mile, then turned and doubled his track. At a stony spot,
where a trail does not remain long at best, he stopped, swung his arms
and jumped as far as he could to the right. For a quarter of a mile he
continued trotting at right angles to the original trail; then he turned
once more toward the mountains.

He could hear it most of the time, even when he ran. Occasionally, as
the dog crossed a bottom evidently, it was almost inaudible and seemed
far away. Then as he reached a highland, it came clearer and surer,
more resonant, and closer than ever. And now from back there, farther
away than the dog, came a sound that for a moment chilled his blood--the
wild, faint yell of a man urging the hound on.

Unreasoning rage stirred within the old man, flushed his face with hot
blood, made his eyes blaze. Who was he to run from any man? Then quickly
rage cooled and calculation took its place. He must throw that hound off
his trail.

He back-tracked once more. He turned at right angles to his original
trail. He continued for an eighth of a mile, then turned back on his
second track. He crossed the original trail at the point where he had
left it, and kept straight on forming the letter T. Once more, on this
short arm of the T he turned at right angles, this time toward the camp
itself, and retracing his steps formed another T.

Thus he made an intricate pattern of trails, comparable somewhat to the
visible marks made by a fancy skater. The hound, finding tracks running
apparently in every direction, would grow bewildered. He would circle,
of course, but the circles themselves would lead him off on tracks that
turned back on themselves. As an additional puzzle, wherever the old man
doubled, he put his arms about a tree and remained, his body pressed
against the trunk a moment, as if he had climbed it. "His whiskers will
be whiter than they are now," he grinned, "before ever he works all that
out."

Two miles farther on, breathing hard, he sat down on a log, for he must
have some rest. He knew when the oncoming hound, who had worked out the
first and simpler puzzle, struck the second and in