The Lennox home was a typical mountain ranch-house,--square, solid,
comforting in storm and wind. Bill was out to the gate when the car
drove up. He was a son of his father, a strong man in body and
personality. He too had heard of the elder Failing, and he opened his
eyes when he saw the slender youth that was his grandson. And he led the
way into the white-walled living room.
The shadows of twilight were just falling; and Bill had already lighted
a fire in the fireplace to remove the chill that always descends with
the mountain night. The whole long room was ruddy and cheerful in its
glare. At once the elder Lennox drew a chair close to it for Dan.
"You must be chilly and worn-out from the long ride," he suggested
quietly. He spoke in the tone a strong man invariably uses toward an
invalid. But while a moment before Dan had welcomed the sight of the
leaping, life-giving flames, he felt a curious resentment at the words.
"I'm not cold," he said. "It's hardly dark yet. I'd sooner go outdoors
and look around."
The elder man regarded him curiously, perhaps with the faintest glimmer
of admiration. "You'd better wait till to-morrow, Dan," he replied.
"Bill will have supper soon, anyway. To-morrow we'll walk up the ridge
and I'll see if I can show you a deer. You don't want to overdo too
much, right at first."
"But, good Heavens! I'm not going to try to spare myself while I'm here.
It's too late for that."
"Of course--but sit down now, anyway. I'm sorry that Snowbird isn't
here."
"Snowbird is--"
"My daughter. My boy, she can make a biscuit! That's not her name, of
course, but we've always called her that. She got tired of keeping house
and is working this summer. Poor Bill has to keep house for her, and no
wonder he's eager to take the stock down to the lower levels. I only
wish he hadn't brought 'em up this spring at all; I've lost dozens from
the coyotes."
"But a coyote can't kill cattle--"
"It can if it has hydrophobia, a common thing in the varmints this time
of year. But as I say, Bill will take the stock down next season, and
then Snowbird's work will be through, and she'll come back here."
"Then she's down in the valley?"
"Far from it. She's a mountain girl if one ever lived. Perhaps you don't
know the recent policy of the forest service to hire women when they can
be obtained. It was a policy started in wartimes and kept up now because
it is economical and efficient. She and a girl from college have a cabin
not five miles from here on old Bald Mountain, and they're doing lookout
duty."
Dan wondered intensely what lookout duty might be. His thoughts went
back to his early study of forestry. "You see, Dan," Lennox said in
explanation, "the government loses thousands of dollars every year by
forest fire. A fire can be stopped easily if it is seen soon after it
starts. But let it burn awhile, in this dry season, and it's a terror--a
wall of flame that races through the forests and can hardly be stopped.
And maybe you don't realize how enormous this region is--literally
hundreds of miles across. We're the last outpost--there are four cabins,
if you can find them, in the first seventy miles back to town. So they
have to put lookouts on the high points, and now they're coming to the
use of aeroplanes so they can keep even a better watch. All summer and
until the rains come in the fall, they have to guard every minute, and
even then sometimes the fires get away from them. And one of the first
things a forester learns, Dan, is to be careful with fire."
"Is that the way they are started--from the carelessness of campers?"
"Partly. There's an old rule in the hills: put out every fire before you
leave it. Be careful with the cigar butts, too--even the coals of a
pipe. But of course the lightning starts many fires, and, I regret to
say, hundreds of them are started with matches."
"But why on earth--"
"It doesn't make very good sense, does it? Well, one reason is that
certain stockmen think that a burned forest makes good range--that the
undervegetation that springs up when the trees are burned makes good
feed for stock. And you must know, too, that there are two kinds of men
in the mountains. One kind--the real mountain man, such as your
grandfather was--lives just as well, just as clean as the ranchers in
the valley. Some of this kind are trappers or herders. But there's
another class too--the most unbelievably shiftless, ignorant people in
America. They have a few acres to raise crops, and they kill deer for
their hides, and most of all they make their living fighting forest
fires. A fire means work for every hill-billy in the region--often five
or six dollars a day and better food than they're used to. Moreover,
they can loaf on the job, put in claims for extra hours, and make what
to them is a fortune.
"You'll likely see a few of the breed before--before your visit here is
ended. There's a family of 'em not three miles away--and that's real
neighborly in the mountains--by the name of Cranston. Bert Cranston
traps a little and makes moonshine; you'll probably see plenty of him
before the trip is over. Sometime I'll tell you of a little difficulty
that I had with him once. You needn't worry about him coming to this
house; he's already received his instructions in that matter.
"But I see I'm getting all tangled up in my traces. Snowbird and a girl
friend from college got jobs this summer as lookouts--all through the
forest service they are hiring women for the work. They are more
vigilant than men, less inclined to take chances, and work cheaper.
These two girls have a cabin near a spring, and they cook their own
food, and are making what is big wages in the mountains. I'm rather
hoping she'll drop over for a few minutes to-night."
"Good Lord--does she travel over these hills in the darkness?"
The mountaineer laughed--a delighted sound that came somewhat curiously
from the bearded lips of the stern, dark man. "Dan, I'll swear she's
afraid of nothing that walks the face of the earth--and it isn't because
she hasn't had experiences either. She's a dead shot with a pistol, for
one thing. She's physically strong, and every muscle is hard as nails.
She used to have Shag, too--the best dog in all these mountains. She's a
mountain girl, I tell you; whoever wins her has got to be able to tame
her!" The mountaineer laughed again. "I sent her to school, of course,
but there was only one boy she'd look at--the athletic coach! And it
wasn't his fault that he didn't follow her back to the mountains."
The call to supper came then, and Dan got his first sight of mountain
food. There were potatoes, newly dug, mountain vegetables that were
crisp and cold, a steak of peculiar shape, and a great bowl of purple
berries to be eaten with sugar and cream. Dan's appetite was not as a
rule particularly good. But evidently the long ride had affected him. He
simply didn't have the moral courage to refuse when the elder Lennox
heaped his plate.
"Good Heavens, I can't eat all that," he said, as it was passed to him.
But the others laughed and told him to take heart.
He took heart. It was a singular thing, but at that first bite his
sudden confidence in his gustatory ability almost overwhelmed him. All
his life he had avoided meat. His mother had always been convinced that
such a delicate child as he had been could not properly digest it. But
all at once he decided to forego his mother's philosophies for good and
all. There was certainly nothing to be gained by following them any
longer. So he cut himself a bite of the tender steak--fully half as
generous as the bites that Bill was consuming across the table. And its
first flavor simply filled him with delight.
"What is this meat?" he asked. "I've certainly tasted it before."
"I'll bet a few dollars that you haven't, if you've lived all your life
in the Middle West," Lennox answered. "Maybe you've got what the
scientists call an inherited memory of it. It's the kind of meat your
grandfather used to live on--venison."
Both of them had seemed pleased that he liked the venison. And both
seemed boyishly eager to test his reaction to the great, wild
huckleberries that were the dessert of the simple meal. He tried them
with much ceremony.
Their flavor really surprised him. They had a tang, a fragrance that was
quite unlike anything he had ever tasted, yet which brought a curious
flood of dim, half-understood memories. It seemed to him that always he
had stood on the hillsides, picking these berries as they grew, and
staining his lips with them. But at once he pushed the thoughts out of
his mind, thinking that his imagination was playing tricks upon him. And
soon after this, Lennox led him out of the house for his first glimpse
of the hills in the darkness.
They walked together out to the gate, across the first of the wide
pastures where, at certain seasons, Lennox kept his cattle; and at last
they came out upon the tree-covered ridge. The moon was just rising.
They could see it casting a curious glint over the very tips of the
pines. But it couldn't get down between them. They stood too close, too
tall and thick for that. And for a moment, Dan's only sensation was one
of silence.
"You have to stand still a moment, to really know anything," Lennox told
him.
They both stood still. Dan was as motionless as that day in the park,
long weeks before, when the squirrel had climbed on his shoulder. The
first effect was a sensation that the silence was deepening around them.
It wasn't really true. It was simply that he had become aware of the
little continuous sounds of which usually he was unconscious, and they
tended to accentuate the hush of the night. He heard his watch ticking
in his pocket, the whispered stir of his own breathing, and he was quite
certain that he could hear the fevered beat of his own heart in his
breast. But then slowly he began to become aware of other sounds, so
faint and indistinct that he really could not be sure that he heard
them. There was a faint rustle and stir, as of the tops of the pine
trees far away. Possibly he heard the wind too, the faintest whisper in
the world through the underbrush. And finally, most wonderful of all, he
began to hear one by one, over the ridge on which he stood, little
whispered sounds of living creatures stirring in the thickets. He knew,
just as all mountaineers know, that the wilderness about him was
stirring and pulsing with life. Some of the sounds were quite clear--an
occasional stir of a pebble or the crack of a twig, and some, like the
faintest twitching of leaves in the brush not ten feet distant, could
only be guessed at.
"What is making the sounds?" he asked.
He didn't know it, at the time, but Lennox turned quickly toward him. It
wasn't that the question had surprised the mountaineer. Rather it was
the tone in which Dan had spoken. It was perfectly cool, perfectly
self-contained.
"The one right close is a chipmunk. I don't know what the others are; no
one ever does know. Perhaps ground squirrels, or rabbits, or birds, and
maybe even one of those harmless old black bears who is curious about
the house. The bears have more curiosity than they can well carry
around, and they say they'll sometimes come up and put their front feet
on a window sill of a house, and peer through the window. They must
think men are the craziest things! And of course it might be a
coyote--and a mad one at that. I guess I told you that they're subject
to rabies at this time of year. I'll confess I'd rather have it be
anything else. And tell me--can you _smell_ anything--"
"Good Lord, Lennox! I can smell all kinds of things."
"I'm glad. Some men can't. No one can enjoy the woods if he can't smell.
Part of the smells are of flowers, and part of balsam, and God only
knows what the others are. They are just the wilderness--"
Dan could not only perceive the smells and sounds, but he felt that they
were leaving an imprint on the very fiber of his soul. He knew one
thing. He knew he could never forget this first introduction to the
mountain night. The whole scene moved him in strange, deep ways in which
he had never been stirred before; it left him exultant and, in deep
wells of his nature far below the usual currents of excitement, a little
excited too. And all the time he had that indefinable sense of
familiarity, a knowledge that this was his own land, and after a long,
long time of wandering in far places, he had come back to it.
Then both of them were startled out of their reflections by the clear,
unmistakable sound of footsteps on the ridge. Both of them turned, and
Lennox laughed softly in the darkness. "My daughter," he said. "I knew
she wouldn't be afraid to come."
V
Dan could see only Snowbird's outline at first, just her shadow against
the moonlit hillside. His glasses were none too good at long range. And
possibly, when she came within range, the first thing that he noticed
about her was her stride. The girls he knew didn't walk in quite that
free, strong way. She took almost a man-size step; and yet it was
curious that she did not seem ungraceful. Dan had a distinct impression
that she was floating down to him on the moonlight. She seemed to come
with such unutterable smoothness. And then he heard her call lightly
through the darkness.
The sound gave him a distinct sense of surprise. Some way, he hadn't
associated a voice like this with a mountain girl; he had supposed that
there would be so many harshening influences in this wild place. Yet the
tone was as clear and full as a trained singer's. It was not a high
voice; and yet it seemed simply brimming, as a cup brims with wine, with
the rapture of life. It was a self-confident voice too, wholly
unaffected and sincere, and wholly without embarrassment.
Then she came close, and Dan saw the moonlight on her face. And so it
came about, whether in dreams or wakefulness, he could see nothing else
for many hours to come.
Beauty, after all, is wholly a matter of the nearest possible approach
to the physical perfection that many centuries of human faces have
established as a standard. Thus perfection in this case does not mean
some ideal that has been imaged by a poet, but just the nearest approach
to the perfect physical body that nature intended, and which is the
flawless example of the type that composes the race. Thus a typical
feature is the most beautiful, and by this reasoning a composite picture
of all the young girl faces in the Anglo-Saxon nations would be the most
beautiful face that any painter could conceive. It follows that health
is above all the most essential quality to beauty, because disease, from
the nature of things, means thwarted growth that could not possibly
reach the typical of the race.
The girl who stood in the moonlight had health. She was simply vibrant
with health. It brought a light to her eyes, and a color to her cheeks,
and life and shimmer to her moonlit hair. It brought curves to her
body, and strength and firmness to her limbs, and the grace of a deer to
her carriage. Whether she had regular features or not Dan would have
been unable to state. He didn't even notice. They weren't important when
health was present. Yet there was nothing of the coarse or bold or
voluptuous about her. She was just a slender girl, perhaps twenty years
of age, and weighing even less than the figure occasionally to be read
in the health magazines for girls of her height. And she was fresh and
cool beyond all words to tell.
And Dan had no delusions about her attitude toward him. For a long
instant she turned her keen, young eyes to his white, thin face; and at
once it became abundantly evident that beyond a few girlish speculations
she felt no interest in him. After a single moment of rather strained,
polite conversation with Dan--just enough to satisfy her idea of the
conventions--she began a thrilling girlhood tale to her father. And she
was still telling it when they reached the house.
Dan held a chair for her in front of the fireplace, and she took it with
entire naturalness. He was careful to put it where the firelight was at
its height. He wanted to see its effect on the flushed cheeks, the soft
dark hair. And then, standing in the shadows, he simply watched her.
With the eye of an artist he delighted in her gestures, her rippling
enthusiasm, her utter, irrepressible girlishness that all of Time had
not years enough to kill.
He decided that she had gray eyes. Gray eyes seemed to be characteristic
of the mountain people. Sometimes, when the shadows fell across them,
they looked very dark, as if the pines had been reflected in them all
day and the image had not yet faded out. But in an instant the shadow
flicked away and left only light,--light that danced and light that
laughed and light that went into him and did all manner of things to his
spirit.
Bill stood watching her, his hands deep in his pockets, evidently a
companion of the best. Her father gazed at her with amused tolerance.
And Dan,--he didn't know in just what way he did look at her. And he
didn't have time to decide. In less than fifteen minutes, and wholly
without warning, she sprang up from her chair and started toward the
door.
"Good Lord!" Dan breathed. "If you make such sudden motions as that I'll
have heart failure. Where are you going now?"
"Back to my watch," she answered, her tone wholly lacking the personal
note which men have learned to expect in the voices of women. And an
instant later the three of them saw her retreating shadow as she
vanished among the pines.
Dan had to be helped to bed. The long ride had been too hard on his
shattered lungs; and nerves and body collapsed an instant after the door
was closed behind the departing girl. He laughed weakly and begged their
pardon; and the two men were really very gentle. They told him it was
their own fault for permitting him to overdo. Lennox himself blew out
the candle in the big, cold bedroom.
Dan saw the door close behind him, and he had an instant's glimpse of
the long sweep of moonlit ridge that stretched beneath the window. Then,
all at once, seemingly without warning, it simply blinked out. Not until
the next morning did he really know why. Insomnia was an old
acquaintance of Dan's, and he had expected to have some trouble in
getting to sleep. His only real trouble was waking up again when Lennox
called him to breakfast. He couldn't believe that the light at his
window shade was really that of morning.
"Good Heavens!" his host exploded. "You sleep the sleep of the just."
Dan was about to tell him that on the contrary he was a very nervous
sleeper, but he thought better of it. Something had surely happened to
his insomnia. The next instant he even forgot to wonder about it in the
realization that his tired body had been wonderfully refreshed. He had
no dread now of the long tramp up the ridge that his host had planned.
But first came target practice. In Dan's baggage he had a certain very
plain but serviceable sporting rifle of about thirty-forty caliber,--a
gun that the information department of the large sporting-goods store in
Gitcheapolis had recommended for his purpose. Except for the few moments
in the store, Dan had never held a rifle in his hands.
Of course the actual aiming of a rifle is an extremely simple
proposition. A man with fair use of his hands and eyes can pick it up in
less time than it takes to tell it. The fine art of marksmanship
consists partly in the finer sighting,--the instinctive realization of
just what fraction of the front sight should be visible through the
rear. But most of all it depends on the control that the nerves have
over the muscles. Some men are born rifle shots; and on others it is
quite impossible to thrust any skill whatever.
The nerve impulses and the muscular reflexes must be exquisitely tuned,
so that the finger presses back on the trigger the identical instant
that the mark is seen on the line of the sights. One quarter of a
second's delay will usually disturb the aim. There must be no muscular
jerk as the trigger is pressed. Shooting was never a sport for blasted
nerves. And usually such attributes as the ability to judge distances,
the speed and direction of a fleeing object, and the velocity of the
wind can only be learned by tireless practice.
When Dan first took the rifle in his hands, Lennox was rather amazed at
the ease and naturalness with which he held it. It seemed to come up
naturally to his shoulder. Lennox scarcely had to tell him how to rest
the butt and to drop his chin as he aimed. He began to look rather
puzzled. Dan seemed to know all these things by instinct. The first
shot, Dan hit the trunk of a five-foot pine at thirty paces.
"But I couldn't very well have missed it!" he replied to Lennox's cheer.
"You see, I aimed at the middle--but I just grazed the edge."
The second shot was not so good, missing the tree altogether. And it was
a singular thing that he aimed longer and tried harder on this shot than
on the first. The third time he tried still harder, and made by far the
worst shot of all.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "I'm getting worse all the time."
Lennox didn't know for sure. But he made a long guess. "It might be
beginner's luck," he said, "but I'm inclined to think you're trying too
hard. Take it easier--depend more on your instincts. Some marksmen are
born good shots and cook themselves trying to follow rules. It might be,
by the longest chance, that you're one of them--at least it won't hurt
to try."
Dan's reply was to lift the rifle lightly to his shoulder, glance
quickly along the trigger, and fire. The bullet struck within one inch
of the center of the pine.
For a long second Lennox gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment. "My
stars, boy!" he cried at last. "Was I mistaken in thinking you were a
born tenderfoot--after all? Can it be that a little of your old
grandfather's skill has been passed down to you? But you can't do it
again."
But Dan did do it again. If anything, the bullet was a little nearer the
center. And then he aimed at a more distant tree.
But the hammer snapped down ineffectively on the breech. He turned with
a look of question.
"Your gun only holds five shots," Lennox explained. Reloading, Dan tried
a more difficult target--a trunk almost one hundred yards distant. Of
course it would have been only child's play to an experienced hunter;
but to a tenderfoot it was the difficult mark indeed. Twice out of four
shots Dan hit the tree trunk, and one of his two hits was practically a
bull's-eye. His two misses were the result of the same mistake he had
made before,--attempting to hold his aim too long.
The shots rang far through the quiet woods, long-drawn from the echoes
that came rocking back from the hills. In contrast with the deep silence
that is really an eternal part of the mountains, the sound seemed
preternaturally loud. All over the great sweep of canyon, the wild
creatures heard and were startled. One could easily imagine the
Columbian deer, gone to their buckbrush to sleep, springing up and
lifting pointed ears. There is no more graceful action in the whole
animal world than this first, startled spring of a frightened buck. Then
old Woof, feeding in the berry bushes, heard the sound too. Woof has
considerably more understanding than most of the wild inhabitants of the
forest, and maybe that is why he left his banquet and started falling
all over his awkward self in descending the hill. It might be that
Lennox would want to procure his guest a sample of bear steak; and Woof
didn't care to be around to suggest such a thing. At least, that would
be his train of thought according to those naturalists who insist on
ascribing human intelligence to all the forest creatures. But it is true
that Woof had learned to recognize a rifle shot, and he feared it worse
than anything on earth.
Far away on the ridge top, a pair of wolves sat together with no more
evidence of life than two shadows. One of the most effective
accomplishments a wolf possesses is its ability to freeze into a
motionless thing, so the sharpest eye can scarcely detect him in the
thickets. It is an advantage in hunting, and it is an even greater
advantage when being hunted. Yet at the same second they sprang up,
simply seemed to spin in the dead pine needles, and brought up with
sharp noses pointed and ears erect, facing the valley.
A human being likely would have wondered at their action. It is doubtful
that human ears could have detected that faint tremor in the air which
was all that was left of the rifle report. But of course this is a
question that would be extremely difficult to prove; for as a rule the
senses of the larger forest creatures, with the great exception of
scent, are not as perfectly developed as those of a human being. A wolf
can see better than a man in the darkness, but not nearly as far in the
daylight. But the wolves knew this sound. Too many times they had seen
their pack-fellows die in the snow when such a report as this, only
intensified a thousand times, cracked at them through the winter air. No
animal in all the forest has been as relentlessly hunted as the wolves,
and they have learned their lessons. For longer years than most men
would care to attempt to count, men have waged a ceaseless war upon
them. And they have learned that their safety lies in flight.
Very quietly, and quite without panic, the wolves turned and headed
farther into the forests. Possibly no other animal would have been
frightened at such a distance. And it is certainly true that in the
deep, winter snows not even the wolves would have heeded the sound. The
snows bring Famine; and when Famine comes to keep its sentry-duty over
the land, all the other forest laws are immediately forgotten or
ignored. The pack forgets all its knowledge of the deadliness of men in
the starving times.
The grouse heard the sound, and, silly creatures that they are, even
they raised their heads for a single instant from their food. The
felines--the great, tawny mountain lions and their smaller cousins, the
lynx--all devoted at least an instant of concentrated attention to it.
A raccoon, sleeping in a pine, opened its eyes, and a lone bull elk,
such as some people think is beyond all other things the monarch of the
forest, rubbed his neck against a tree trunk and wondered.
But yet there remained two of the larger forest creatures that did not
heed at all. One was Urson, the porcupine, whose stupidity is beyond all
measuring. He was too slow and patient and dull to give attention to a
rifle bullet. And the other was Graycoat the coyote, gray and strange
and foam-lipped, on the hillside. Graycoat could hear nothing but
strange whinings and voices that rang ever in his ears. All other sounds
were obscured. The reason was extremely simple. In the dog days a
certain malady sometimes comes to the wild creatures, and it is dreaded
worse than drought or cold or any of the manifold terrors of their
lives. No one knows what name they have for this sickness. Human beings
call it hydrophobia. And the coyotes are particularly susceptible to it.
Ordinarily the name of coyote is, among the beasts, a synonym for
cowardice as well as a certain kind of detested cunning. All the
cowardice of a mountain lion and a wolf and a lynx put together doesn't
equal the amount that Graycoat carried in the end of his tail. That
doesn't mean timidity. Timidity is a trait of the deer, a gift of nature
for self-preservation, and no one holds it against them. In fact, it
makes them rather appealing. Cowardice is a lack of moral courage to
remain and fight when nature has afforded the necessary weapons to fight
with. It is sort of a betrayal of nature,--a misuse of powers. No one
calls a rabbit a coward because it runs away. A warlike rabbit is
something that no man has ever seen since the beginning of the world,
and probably never will. Nature hasn't given the little animal any
weapons.
But this is not true of the wolf or cougar. A wolf has ninety pounds of
lightning-quick muscles, and teeth that are nothing but a set of very
well-sharpened and perfectly arranged daggers. A cougar not only has
fangs, but talons that can rend flesh more terribly than the cogs of a
machine, and strength to make the air hum under his paw as he strikes it
down. And so it is an extremely disappointing thing to see either of
these animals flee in terror from an Airedale not half their size,--a
sight that most mountain men see rather often. The fact that they act
with greater courage in the famine times, and that either of them will
fight to the very death when brought to bay, are not extenuating
circumstances to their cowardice. A mouse will bite the hand that picks
it up if it has no other choice.
A coyote is, at least in a measure, equipped for fighting. He is smaller
than a wolf, and his fangs are almost as terrible. Yet a herd of
determined sheep, turning to face him, puts him in a panic. The smallest
dog simply petrifies him with terror. And a rifle report,--he has been
known to put a large part of a county between himself and the source of
the sound in the shortest possible time. If a mountain man feels like
fighting, he simply calls another a coyote. It is more effective than
impugning the virtue of his female ancestors. To be called a coyote
means to be termed the lowest, most despised creature of which the
imagination can conceive.
And besides being a perfect, unprincipled coward, he is utterly without
pride. And that is saying a great deal. Most large animals have more
pride than they have intelligence, particularly the bear and the moose.
A mature bear, dying before his foes, will often refrain from howling
even in the greatest agony. He is simply too proud. A moose greatly
dislikes to appear to run away in the presence of enemies. He will walk
with the dignity of a bishop until he thinks the brush has obscured him;
and then he will simply fly! And there was a dog once, long ago, which,
meeting on the highways a dog that was much larger and that could not
possibly be mastered, would simply turn away his eyes and pretend not to
see him.
A coyote is wholly without this virtue, as well as most of the other
virtues of the animal world. He not only eats carrion--because if one
started to condemn all the carrion-eating animals of the forest he would
soon have precious few of them left--but he also eats old shoes off
rubbish piles. Unlike the wolf, he does not even find his courage in the
famine times. He has cunning, but cunning is not greatly beloved in men
or beasts. Most folk prefer a kindly, blundering awkwardness, a
simplicity of heart and spirit, such as are to be found in Woof the
bear.
But Graycoat has one tendency that makes all the other forest creatures
regard him with consternation: he is extremely liable to madness. Along
in dog days he is seen suddenly to begin to rush through the thickets,
barking and howling and snapping at invisible enemies, with foam
dropping from his terrible lips. His eyes grow yellow and strange. And
this is the time that even the bull elk turns off his trail. No one
cares to meet Graycoat when the hydrophobia is upon him. At such time
all his cunning and his terror are quite forgotten in his agony, and he
is likely to make an unprovoked charge on Woof himself.
Now Graycoat came walking stiff-legged down through the thickets. And
the forest creatures, from the smallest to the great, forgot the far-off
peal of the rifle bullets to get out of his way.