Part 5 (1/2)

Then all at once Lennox halted in his tracks, evidently with no other purpose than to study the tall form that now was walking up the trail in front of him. And he uttered a little exclamation of amazement.

”Listen, Dan!” he cried suddenly. ”Haven't you ever been in the woods before?”

Dan turned, smiling. ”No. What have I done now?”

”What have you done! You're doing something that I never saw a tenderfoot do in my life, before. I've known men to hunt for years--literally years--and not know how to do it. And that is--to place your feet.”

”Place my feet? I'm afraid I don't understand.”

”I mean--to walk silently. To stalk, d.a.m.n it, Dan! This brush is dry.

It's dry as tinder. A cougar can get over it like so much smoke, and a man who's lived all his life in the hills can usually climb a ridge and not make any more noise than a young avalanche. Just now I had a feeling that I wasn't hearing you walk, and I thought my ears must be going back on me. I stopped to see. You were doing it, Dan. You were stalking--putting down your feet like a cat. It's the hardest thing to learn there is, and you're doing it the first half-hour.”

Dan laughed, delighted more than he cared to show. ”Well, what of it?”

he asked.

”What of it? That's it--what of it. And what caused it, and all about it. Go on and let me think.”

The result of all this thought was at least to hover in the near vicinity of a certain conclusion. That conclusion was that at least a few of the characteristics of his grandfather had been pa.s.sed down to Dan. It meant that possibly, if time remained, he would not turn out such a weakling, after all. Of course his courage, his nerve, had yet to be tested; but the fact remained that long generations of frontiersmen ancestors had left this influence upon him. The wild was calling to him, wakening instincts long smothered in cities, but sure and true as ever.

It was the beginning of regeneration. Voices of the long past were speaking to him, and the Failings once more had begun to run true to form. Inherited tendencies were in a moment changing this weak, diseased youth into a frontiersman and wilderness inhabitant such as his ancestors had been before him.

But before ever Lennox had a chance to think all around the subject, to actually convince himself that Dan really was a throwback and recurrence of type, there ensued on that gaunt ridge a curious adventure. The test of nerve and courage was nearer than either of them had guessed.

They were slipping along over the pine needles, their eyes intent on the trail ahead. And then Lennox saw a curious thing. He beheld Dan suddenly stop in the trail and turn his eyes towards a heavy thicket that lay perhaps one hundred yards to their right. For an instant he looked almost like a wild creature himself. His head was lowered, as if he were listening. His muscles were set and ready.

Lennox had prided himself that he had retained all the powers of his five senses, and that few men in the mountains had keener ears than he.

Yet it was truth that at first he only knew the silence, and the stir and pulse of his own blood. He a.s.sumed then that Dan was watching something that from his position, twenty feet behind, he could not see.

He tried to probe the thickets with his eyes.

Then Dan whispered. Ever so soft a sound, but yet distinct in the silence. ”There's something living in that thicket.”

Then Lennox heard it too. As they stood still, the sound became ever clearer and more p.r.o.nounced. Some living creature was advancing toward them; and twigs were cracking beneath its feet. The sounds were rather subdued, and yet, as the animal approached, both of them instinctively knew that they were extremely loud for the usual footsteps of any of the wild creatures.

”What is it?” Dan asked quietly.

Lennox was so intrigued by the sounds that he was not even observant of the peculiar, subdued quality in Dan's voice. Otherwise, he would have wondered at it. ”I'm free to confess I don't know,” he said. ”It's booming right towards us, like most animals don't care to do. Of course it may be a human being. You must watch out for that.”

They waited. The sound ended. They stood straining for a long moment without speech.

”That was the dumdest thing!” Lennox went on. ”Of course it might have been a bear--you never know what they're going to do. It might have got sight of us and turned off. But I can't believe that it was just a deer--”

But then his words chopped squarely off in his throat. The plodding advance commenced again. And the next instant a gray form revealed itself at the edge of the thicket.

It was Graycoat, half-blind with his madness, and desperate in his agony.

There was no more deadly thing in all the hills than he. Even the bite of a rattlesnake would have been welcomed beside his. He stood a long instant, and all his instincts and reflexes that would have ordinarily made him flee in abject terror were thwarted and twisted by the fever of his madness. He stared a moment at the two figures, and his red eyes could not interpret them. They were simply foes, for it was true that when this racking agony was upon him, even lifeless trees seemed foes sometimes. He seemed eerie and unreal as he gazed at them out of his burning eyes; and the white foam gathered at his fangs. And then, wholly without warning, he charged down at them.