Snowbird felt very glad of her intimate, accurate knowledge of the whole
region of the Divide. In her infancy the winding trails had been her
playground, and long ago she had acquired the mountaineer's sixth sense
for traversing them at night. She had need of that knowledge now. The
moon was dim beneath thin clouds, and the lantern she carried did not
promise much aid. The glass was rather smoked from previous burnings,
and its flame glowed dully and threatened to go out altogether. It cast
a few lame beams on the trail beneath her feet; but they perished
quickly in the expanse of darkness.
She slipped into her free, swinging stride; and the last beams from the
windows of the house were soon lost in the pines behind her. It was one
of those silent, breathless nights with which no mountaineer is entirely
unacquainted, and for a long tune the only sound she could hear was her
own soft tramp in the pine needles. The trees themselves were
motionless. That peculiar sound, not greatly different from that of
running water which the wind often makes in the pine tops, was entirely
lacking. Not that she could be deceived by it,--as stories tell that
certain tenderfeet, dying of thirst in the barren hills, have been. But
she always liked the sound; and she missed it especially to-night.
She felt that if she would stop to listen, there would be many faint
sounds in the thickets,--those little hushed noises that the wild things
make to remind night-wanderers of their presence. But she did not in the
least care to hear these sounds. They do not tend toward peace of mind
on a long walk over the ridges.
The wilderness began at once. Whatever influence toward civilization her
father's house had brought to the wilds chopped off as beneath a blade
in the first fringe of pines. This is altogether characteristic of the
Oregon forests. They are much too big and too old to be tamed in any
large degree by the presence of one house. No one knew this fact better
than Lennox himself who, in a hard winter of four years before, had
looked out of his window to find the wolf pack ranged in a hungry circle
about his house. Within two hundred yards after she had passed through
her father's door, she was perfectly aware that the wild was stirring
and throbbing with life about her. At first she tried very hard to think
of other things. But the attempt wasn't entirely a success. And before
she had covered the first of the twelve miles, the sounds that from the
first had been knocking at the door of her consciousness began to make
an entrance.
If a person lies still long enough, he can usually hear his heart
beating and the flow of his blood in his arteries. Any sound, no matter
how faint, will make itself heard at last. It was this way with a very
peculiar noise that crept up through the silence from the trail behind
her. She wouldn't give it any heed at first. But in a very little while
indeed, it grew so insistent that she could no longer disregard it.
Some living creature was trotting along on the trail behind, keeping
approximately the same distance between them.
Foregoing any attempt to ignore it, she set her cool young mind to
thinking what manner of beast it might be. Its step was not greatly
different from that of a large dog,--except possibly a dog would have
made slightly more noise. Yet she couldn't even be sure of this basic
premise, because this animal, whatever it might be, had at first
seemingly moved with utmost caution, but now took less care with its
step than is customary with the wild denizens of the woods. A wolf, for
instance, can simply drift when it wishes, and the silence of a cougar
is a name. Yet unless her pursuer were a dog, which seemed entirely
unlikely, it was certainly one of these two. She would have liked very
much to believe the step was that of Old Woof, the bear, suddenly
curious as to what this dim light of hers might be; but she couldn't
bring herself to accept the lie. Woof, except when wounded or cornered,
is the most amiable creature in the Oregon woods, and it would give her
almost a sense of security to have him waddling along behind her. The
wolves and cougar, remembering the arms of Woof, would not be nearly so
curious. But unfortunately, the black bear had never done such a thing
in the memory of man, and if he had, he would have made six times as
much noise. He can go fairly softly when he is stalking, but when he is
obliged to trot--as he would be obliged to do to keep up with a
swift-walking human figure--he cracks twigs like a rolling log. She had
the impression that the animal behind had been passing like smoke at
first, but wasn't taking the trouble to do it now.
The sound was a soft _pat-pat_ on the trail,--sometimes entirely
obliterated but always recurring when she began to believe that she had
only fancied its presence. Sometimes a twig, rain-soaked though it was,
cracked beneath a heavy foot, and again and again she heard the brush
crushing and rustling as something passed through. Behind it all, a
weird _motif_, remained the _pat-pat_ of cushioned feet. Sometimes, when
the trail was covered with soft pine needles, it was practically
indistinguishable. She had to strain to hear it,--and it is not pleasing
to the spirit to have to strain to hear any sound. On the bare,
rain-packed earth, even untrained plainsmen's ears could not possibly
doubt the reality of the sound.
The animal was approximately one hundred feet behind. It wasn't a wolf,
she thought. The wolves ran in packs this season, and except in winter
were more afraid of human beings than any other living creature. It
wasn't a lynx--one of those curiosity-devoured little felines that will
mew all day on a trail and never dare come near. It was much too large
for a lynx. The feet fell too solidly. She had already given up the idea
that it could be Woof. There were no dogs in the mountains to follow at
heel; and she had no desire whatever to meet Shag, the faithful hybrid
that used to be her guardian in the hills. For Shag had gone to his
well-deserved rest several seasons before. Two other possibilities
remained. One was that this follower was a human being, the other that
it was a cougar.
Ordinarily a human being is much more potentially dangerous to a woman
in the hills at night than a cougar. A cougar is an abject coward and
some men are not. But Snowbird felt herself entirely capable of handling
any human foes. They would have no advantage over her; they would have
no purpose in killing from ambush; and she trusted to her own
marksmanship implicitly. While it is an extremely difficult thing to
shoot at a cougar leaping from the thicket, a tall man standing on a
trail presents an easy target. Besides, she had a vague sense of
discomfort that if this animal were a cougar, he wasn't acting true to
form. He was altogether too bold.
She knew perfectly that many times since men came to live in the
pine-clad mountains they have been followed by the great, tawny cats.
Curiosity had something to do with it, and perhaps less pleasing
reasons. But any dreadful instincts that such a cat may have, he utterly
lacks courage to obey. He has an inborn fear of men, a fear that goes
down to the roots of the world, and he simply doesn't dare make an
attack. It was always a rather distressing experience, but nothing ever
came of it except a good tale around a fireside. But most of these
episodes, Snowbird remembered, occurred either in daylight or in the dry
season. The reason was obviously that in the damp woods or at night a
stalking cougar cannot be perceived by human senses. Her own senses
could perceive this animal all too plainly,--and the fact suggested
unpleasant possibilities.
The animal on the trail behind her was taking no care at all to go
silently. He was simply pat-patting along, wholly at his ease. He acted
as if the fear that men have instilled in his breed was somehow missing.
And that is why she instinctively tried to hurry on the trail.
The step kept pace. For a long mile, up a barren ridge, she heard every
step it made. Then, as the brush closed deeper around her, she couldn't
hear it at all.
She hurried on, straining to the silence. No, the sound was stopped.
Could it be that the animal, fearful at last, had turned from her trail?
And then for the first time a gasp that was not greatly different from a
despairing sob caught at her throat. She heard the steps again, and they
were in the thickets just beside her.
* * * * *
Two hours before Snowbird had left the house, on her long tramp to the
ranger station, Dan had started home. He hadn't shot until sunset, as he
had planned. The rear guard of the waterfowl--hardy birds who spent most
of the winter in the Lake region and which had come south in the great
flight that had been completed some weeks before--had passed in hundreds
over his blind, and he had obtained the limit he had set upon
himself--ten drake mallards--by four o'clock in the afternoon. If he had
stayed to shoot longer, his birds would have been wasted. So he started
back along a certain winding trail that led through the thickets and
which would, if followed long enough, carry him to the road that led to
the valleys.
He rode one of Lennox's cattle ponies, the only piece of horse-flesh
that Bill had not taken to the valleys when he had driven down the
livestock. She was a pretty bay, a spirited, high-bred mare that could
whip about on her hind legs at the touch of the rein on her neck. She
made good time along the trail. And an hour before sunset he passed the
only human habitation between the marsh and Lennox's house,--the cabin
that had been recently occupied by Landy Hildreth.
He glanced at the place as he passed and saw that it was deserted. No
smell of wood smoke remained in the air. Evidently Landy had gone down
to the settlements with his precious testimony in regard to the arson
ring. Yet it was curious that no word had been heard of him. As far as
Dan knew, neither the courts nor the Forest Service had taken action.
He hurried on, four miles farther. The trail entered the heavy thickets,
and he had to ride slowly. It was as wild a section as could be found on
the whole Divide. Once a deer leaped from the trail, and once he heard
Woof grunting in the thickets. And just as he came to a little cleared
space, three strange, dark birds flung up on wide-spreading wings.
He knew them at once. All mountaineers come to know them before their
days are done. They were the buzzards, the followers of the dead. And
what they were doing in the thicket just beside the trail, Dan did not
dare to think.
Of course they might be feeding on the body of a deer, mortally wounded
by some hunter. He resolved to ride by without investigating. He glanced
up. The buzzards were hovering in the sky, evidently waiting for him to
pass. Then, mostly to relieve a curious sense of discomfort in his own
mind, he stopped his horse and dismounted.
The twilight had started to fall, and already its first grayness had
begun to soften the harder lines of forest and hill. And after his
first glance at the curious white heap beside the trail, he was
extremely glad that it had. But there was no chance to mistake the
thing. The elements and much more terrible agents had each wrought their
change, yet there was grisly evidence in plenty to show what had
occurred. Dan didn't doubt for an instant but that it was the skeleton
of Landy Hildreth.
He forced himself to go nearer. The buzzards were almost done, and one
white bone from the shoulder gave unmistakable evidence of the passage
of a bullet. What had happened thereafter, he could only guess.
He got back quickly on his horse. He understood, now, why nothing had
been heard of the evidence that Landy Hildreth was to turn over to the
courts as to the activities of the arson ring. Some one--probably Bert
Cranston himself--had been waiting on the trail. Others had come
thereafter. And his lips set in his resolve to let this murder measure
in the debt he had to pay Cranston.
The Lennox house seemed very silent when, almost an hour later, he
turned his horse into the corral. He had rather hoped that Snowbird
would be at the door to meet him. The darkness had just fallen, and all
the lamps were lighted. He strode into the living room, warming his
hands an instant beside the fireplace. The fire needed fuel. It had
evidently been neglected for nearly an hour.
Then he called Snowbird. His voice echoed in the silent room,
unanswered. He called again, then went to look for her. At the door of
the dining room he found the note that she had left for him.
It told, very simply and plainly, that her father lay injured in his
bed, and he was to remain and do what he could for him. She had gone for
help to the ranger station.
He leaped through the rooms to Lennox's door, then went in on tiptoe.
And the first thing he saw when he opened the door was the grizzled
man's gray face on the pillow.
"You're home early, Dan," he said. "How many did you get?"
It was entirely characteristic. Shaggy old Woof is too proud to howl
over the wounds that lay him low, and this gray old bear on the bed had
partaken of his spirit.
"Good Lord," Dan answered. "How badly are you hurt?"
"Not so bad but that I'm sorry that Snowbird has gone drifting twelve
miles over the hills for help. It's dark as pitch."
And it was. Dan could scarcely make out the outline of the somber ridges
against the sky.
They talked on, and their subject was whether Dan should remain to take
care of Lennox, or whether he should attempt to overtake Snowbird with
the horse. Of course the girl had ordered him to stay. Lennox, on the
other hand, said that Dan could not help him in the least, and desired
him to follow the girl.
"I'm not often anxious about her," he said slowly. "But it is a long
walk through the wildest part of the Divide. She's got nothing but a
pistol and a lantern that won't shine. Besides--I've had bad dreams."
"You don't mean--" Dan's words came hard--"that she's in any danger from
the animals--the cougars--or the wolves?"
"Barring accidents, no. But, Dan--I want you to go. I'm resting fairly
easily, and there's whisky on the table in case of a pinch. Someway--I
can't bar accidents to-night. I don't like to think of her on those
mountains alone."
And remembering what had lain beside the trail, Dan felt the same. He
had heard, long ago, that any animal that has once tasted human flesh
loses its fear of men and is never to be trusted again. Some wild animal
that still hunted the ridges had, in the last month, done just that
thing. He left the room and walked softly to the door.
The night lay silent and mysterious over the Divide. He stood listening.
The girl had started only an hour before, and it was unlikely that she
could have traversed more than two miles of the steep trail in that
time. He could fancy her toiling ever upward, somewhere on the dark
ridge that lay beyond. Although the horse ordinarily did not climb a
hill more swiftly than a human being, he didn't doubt but that he could
overtake her before she went three miles farther. But where lay his
duty,--with the injured man in the house or with the daughter on her
errand of mercy in the darkness?
Then the matter was decided for him. So faint that it only whispered at
the dim, outer frontiers of hearing, a sound came pricking through the
darkness. Only his months of listening to the faint sounds of the
forest, and the incredible silence of the night enabled him to hear it
at all. But he knew what it was, the report of a pistol. Snowbird had
met an enemy in the darkness.
He called once to Lennox, snatched the shotgun that still stood where he
had placed it in the corner of the room, and hastened to the corral. The
mare whickered plaintively when he took her from her food.
X
Even in the darkest night, there is one light that never brings hope or
cannot lead. It is not a twinkling, joyous light like that mysterious
will-o'-the-wisp that now and again has lured travelers into the marshes
to their death. Nor can any one ever mistake it, or be soothed and
cheered by it. It always appears the same way,--two green circles, close
together, in the darkness.
When Snowbird first heard the step in the thickets beside her, she
halted bravely and held her lantern high. She understood at last. The
very extremity of the beams found a reflection in two very curious
circles of greenish fire: a fire that was old upon the world before man
ever rubbed two sticks together to strike a flame. Of course the dim
rays had simply been reflected on the eyes of some great beast of prey.
She identified it at once. Only the eyes of the felines, with vertical
pupils, have this identical greenish glare. The eyes of the wolves glow
in the darkness, but the circles are usually just bright points. Of
course it was a cougar.
She didn't cry out again. Realizing at last the reality of her peril,
her long training in the mountains came to her aid. That did not mean
she was not truly and terribly afraid. The sight of the eyes of a
hunting animal in the darkness calls up memories from the
germ-plasm,--deep-buried horrors of thousands of generations past, when
such lights glowed all about the mouth of the cave. Besides, the beast
was hunting _her_. She couldn't doubt this fact. Curiosity might make a
lion follow her, but it would never beget such a wild light of madness
in his eyes as this she had just seen. Only the frenzied pulse of wild
blood through the fine vessels of the corneas could occasion such a glow
as this. She simply clamped down all her moral strength on her rising
hysteria and looked her situation in the face. Her hand flew
instinctively to her side, and the pistol leaped in the lantern light.
But the eyes had already blinked out before she could raise the weapon.
She shot twice. The echoes roared back, unbelievably loud in the
silence, and then abruptly died; and the only sound was a rustling of
leaves as the cougar crouched. She sobbed once, then hurried on.
She was afraid to listen at first. She wanted to believe that her pistol
fire would frighten the animal from her trail. She knew, under ordinary
conditions, that it would. If he still followed, it could mean but one
thing,--that some unheard-of incident had occurred to destroy his fear
of men. It would mean that he had knowingly set upon her trail and was
hunting her with all the age-old remorselessness that is the code of the
mountains.
For a little while all was silence. Then out of the hush the thickets
suddenly crashed and shook on the opposite side of the trail. She fired
blindly into the thicket. Then she caught herself with a sob. But two
shells remained in her pistol, and they must be saved for the test.
Whisperfoot the cougar, remembering the lessons of his youth, turned
from the trail when he had first heard Snowbird's step. He had crouched
and let her pass. She was walking into the wind; and as she was at the
closest point a message had blown back to him.
The hair went straight on his shoulders and along his spine. His blood,
running cold an instant before from fear, made a great leap in his
veins. A picture came in his dark mind: the chase for a deer when the
moon had set, the stir of a living thing that broke twigs in the
thickets, and the leap he had made. There had been blood, that
night,--the wildness and the madness and the exultation of the kill. Of
course there had been terror first, but the terror had soon departed and
left something lying warm and still in the thickets. It was the same
game that walked his trail in front--game that died easily and yet, in a
vague way he did not understand, the noblest game of all. It was living
flesh, to tear with talon and fang.
All his training, all the instincts imbued in him by a thousand
generations of cougars who knew this greatest fear, were simply
obliterated by the sudden violence of his hunting-madness. He had tasted
this blood once, and it could never be forgotten. The flame leaped in
his eyes. And then he began the stalk.
A cougar, trying to creep silently on its game, does not move quickly.
It simply steals, as a serpent steals through the grass. Whisperfoot
stalked for a period of five minutes, to learn that the prey was farther
away from him at every step.
He trotted forward until he came close, and again he stalked. Again he
found, after a few minutes of silent creeping through the thickets, that
he had lost distance. Evidently this game did not feed slowly, like the
deer. It was to be a chase then. Again he trotted within one hundred
feet of the girl.
Three times more he tried to stalk before he finally gave it up
altogether. This game was like the porcupine,--simply to be chased down
and taken. As in the case of all animals that hunt their game by
overtaking it, there was no longer any occasion for going silently. The
thing to do was to come close and spring from the trail behind.
Though the fear was mostly gone, the cougar retained enough of that
caution that most wild animals exhibit when hunting a new game so that
he didn't attempt to strike Snowbird down at once. But as the chase went
on, his passion grew upon him. Ever he crept nearer. And at last he
sprang full into the thickets beside her.
At that instant she had shot for the first time. Because the light had
left his eyes before she could find aim, both shots had been clean
misses. And terrible as the reports were, he was too engrossed in the
chase to be frightened away by mere sound. This was the cry the man-pack
always made,--these sudden, startling sounds in the silence. But he felt
no pain. He crouched a moment, shivering. Then he bounded on again.
The third shot was a miss too: in fact, there had been no chance for a
hit. A sound in the darkness is as unreliable a target as can possibly
be imagined. And it didn't frighten him as much as the others.
Three times he crouched, preparing for a spring, and three times his
tawny tail began that little up-and-down motion that is always the
warning before his leap. But each time, as he waited to find his
courage, the game had hurried on.
Now she had her back to a tree and was holding the lantern high. It
glinted on his eyes. And the fourth time she shot, and something hot and
strange singed by close to his head. But it wasn't the pain of one quill
from a porcupine, and it only increased his anger. He waited, crouching,
and the girl started on.
She was making other sounds now--queer, whimpering sounds not greatly
different from the bleat that the fawn utters when it dies. It was a
fear-sound, and if there is one emotion with which the wild beasts are
acquainted, in all its phases, it is fear. She was afraid of him then,
and that meant he need no longer be in the least afraid of her. His skin
began to twitch all over with that terrible madness and passion of the
flesh-hunters.
This game was like the deer, and the thing to do was lie in wait. There
was only one trail. He was simply following his instincts, no conscious
intelligence, when he made a long circle about her and turned back to
the trail two hundred yards in front. He wasn't afraid of losing her in
the darkness. She was neither fleet like the deer nor courageous like
Woof, the bear. He had only to wait and leap from the darkness when she
passed.
And because this was his own way of hunting, because the experiences of
a thousand generations of cougars had taught him that it was the safest
way, that even an elk may be downed by a surprise leap from ambush, the
last of his fear went out of him. The step drew nearer, and he knew he
would not again be afraid to give his stroke.
* * * * *
When Dan Failing, riding like mad over the mountain trail, heard the
third shot from Snowbird's pistol, he felt that one of the debts he owed
had come due at last. He seemed to know, as the darkness pressed around
him, that he was to be tried in the fire. And the horse staggered
beneath him as he tried to hasten.
He showed no mercy to his mount. Horseflesh isn't made for carrying a
heavy man over such a trail as this, and she was red-nostriled and
lathered before half a mile had been covered. He made her leap up the
rocks, and on the fairly level stretches he loosed the reins and lashed
her into a gallop. Only a mountain horse could have stood that test. To
Dan's eyes, the darkness was absolute; yet she kept straight to the
trail. He made no attempt to guide her. She bounded over logs that he
couldn't see, and followed turn after turn in the trail without ever a
misstep.
He gave no thought to his own safety. His courage was at the test, and
no risk of his own life must interfere with his attempt to save Snowbird
from the danger that threatened her. He didn't know when the horse would
fall with him and precipitate him down a precipice, and he was perfectly
aware that to crash into a low-hanging limb of one of the great trees
beside the trail would probably crush his skull. But he took the chance.
And before the ride was done he found himself pleading with the horse,
even as he lashed her sides with his whip.
The lesser forest creatures sprang from his trail; and once the mare
leaped high to miss a dark shadow that crossed in front. As she caught
her stride, Dan heard a squeal and a rattle of quills that identified
the creature as a porcupine.
By now he had passed the first of the worst grades, coming out upon a
long, easy slope of open forest. Again he urged his horse, leaving to
her keen senses alone the choosing of the path between the great tree
trunks. He rode almost in silence. The deep carpet of pine needles, wet
from the recent rains, dulled the sound of the horse's hoofs.
Then he heard Snowbird fire for the fourth time; and he knew that he had
almost overtaken her. The report seemed to smash the air. And he lashed
his horse into the fastest run she knew,--a wild, sobbing figure in the
darkness.
"She's only got one shot more," he said. He knew how many bullets her
pistol carried; and the danger--whatever it was--must be just at hand.
Underbrush cracked beneath him. And then the horse drew up with a jerk
that almost hurled him from the saddle.
He lashed at her in vain. She was not afraid of the darkness and the
rocks of the trail, but some Terror in the woods in front had in an
instant broken his control over her. She reared, snorting; then danced
in an impotent circle. Meanwhile, precious seconds were fleeing.
He understood now. The horse stood still, shivering beneath him, but
would not advance a step. The silence deepened. Somewhere in the
darkness before him a great cougar was waiting by the trail, and
Snowbird, hoping for the moment that it had given up the chase, was
hastening through the shadows squarely into its ambush.
Whisperfoot crouched lower: and again his long serpent of a tail began
the little vertical motion that always precedes his leap. He had not
forgotten the wild rapture of that moment he had inadvertently sprung on
Landy Hildreth,--or how, after his terror had died, he had come creeping
back. He hunted his own way, waiting on the trail; and his madness was
at its height. He was not just Whisperfoot; the coward, that runs at the
shadow of a tall form in the thickets. The consummation was complete,
and that single experience of a month before had made of him a hunter of
men. His muscles set for the leap.
So intent was he that his keen senses didn't detect the fact that there
was a curious echo to the girl's footsteps. Dan Failing had slipped down
from his terrified horse and was running up the trail behind her,
praying that he could be in time.
Snowbird heard the pat, pat of his feet; but at first she did not dare
to hope that aid had come to her. She had thought of Dan as on the
far-away marshes; and her father, the only other living occupant of this
part of the Divide, might even now be lying dead in his house. In her
terror, she had lost all power of interpretation of events. The sound
might be the cougar's mate, or even the wolf pack, jealous of his game.
Sobbing, she hurried on into Whisperfoot's ambush.
Then she heard a voice, and it seemed to be calling to her.
"Snowbird--I'm coming, Snowbird," a man's strong voice was shouting. She
whirled with a sob of thankfulness.
At that instant the cougar sprang.
Terrified though she was, Snowbird's reflexes had kept sure and true.
Even as the great cat leaped, a long, lithe shadow out of the shadow,
her finger pressed back against the trigger of her pistol. She had been
carrying her gun in front of her, and she fired it, this last time, with
no conscious effort. It was just a last instinctive effort to defend
herself.
One other element affected the issue. She had whirled to answer Dan's
cry just as the cougar left the ground. But she had still been in range.
The only effect was to lessen, in some degree, the accuracy of the
spring. The bullet caught the beast in mid-air; but even if it had
reached its heart, the momentum of the attack was too great to be
completely overcome. Snowbird only knew that some vast, resistless power
had struck her, and that the darkness seemed to roar and explode about
her.
Hurled to her face in the trail, she did not see the cougar sprawl on
the earth beside her. The flame in the lantern almost flicked out as it
fell from her hand, then flashed up and down, from the deepest gloom to
a vivid glare with something of the effect of lightning flickering in
the sky. Nor did she hear the first frenzied thrashing of the wounded
animal. Kindly unconsciousness had fallen, obscuring this and also the
sight of the great cat, in the agony of its wound, creeping with broken
shoulder and bared claws across the pine needles toward her defenseless
body.
But the terrible fangs were never to know her white flesh. Some one had
come between. There was no chance to shoot: Whisperfoot and the girl
were too near together for that. But one course remained; and there was
not even time to count the cost. In this most terrible moment of Dan
Failing's life, there was not even an instant's hesitation. He did not
know that Whisperfoot was wounded. He saw the beast creeping forward in
the weird dancing light of the fallen lantern, and he only knew that his
flesh, not hers, must resist its rending talons. Nothing else mattered.
No other considerations could come between.
It was the test; and Dan's instincts prompted coolly and well. He
leaped with all his strength. The cougar bounded into his arms, not upon
the prone body of the girl. And she opened her eyes to hear a curious
thrashing in the pine needles, a strange grim battle that, as the
lantern flashed out, was hidden in the darkness.
And that battle, in the far reaches of the Divide, passed into a legend.
It was the tale of how Dan Failing, his gun knocked from his hands as he
met the cougar's leap, with his own unaided arms kept the life-giving
breath from the animal's lungs and killed him in the pine needles. Claw
and fang and the frenzy of death could not matter at all.
Thus Failing established before all men his right to the name he bore.
And thus he paid one of his debts--life for a life, as the code of the
forest has always decreed--and in the fire of danger and pain his metal
was tried and proven.