e wood-pile
sat a Yellow Red Fox in a magnificent coat. Another was in front of the
house, and the keeper said that as many as a dozen came some days. And
sometimes, he said, there also came a wonderful Silver Fox, a size
bigger than the rest, black as coal, with eyes like yellow diamonds, and
a silver frosting like little stars on his midnight fur.

"My! but he's a beauty. That skin would buy the best team of mules on
the Yellowstone." That was interesting and furnished talk for a while.
In the morning when they were rising for their candlelight breakfast,
the hotel man glancing from the window exclaimed, "Here he is now!" and
Josh peered forth to see in the light of sunrise something he had often
heard of, but never before seen, a coal-black Fox, a giant among his
kind. How slick and elegant his glossy fur, how slim his legs, and what
a monstrous bushy tail; and the other Foxes moved aside as the patrician
rushed in impatient haste to seize the food thrown out by the cook.

"Ain't he a beauty?" said the hotel man. "I'll bet that pelt would fetch
five hundred."

Oh, why did he say "five hundred," the exact sum, for then it was that
the tempter entered into Josh Cree's heart. Five hundred dollars! just
the amount of the mortgage. "Who owns wild beasts? The man that kills
them," said the tempter, and the thought was a live one in his breast as
Josh rode back to Fort Yellowstone.

[Illustration]

At Gardiner he received his pay, $6, for three days' work and, turning
it into groceries, set out for the poor home that soon would be lost to
him, and as he rode he did some hard and gloomy thinking. On his wrist
there hung a wonderful Indian quirt of plaited rawhide and horsehair
with beads on the shaft, and a band of Elk teeth on the butt. It was a
pet of his, and "good medicine," for a flat piece of elkhorn let in the
middle was perforated with a hole, through which the distant landscape
was seen much clearer--a well-known law, an ancient trick, but it made
the quirt prized as a thing of rare virtue, and Josh had refused good
offers for it. Then a figure afoot was seen, and coming nearer, it
turned out to be a friend, Jack Day, out a-gunning with a .22 rifle. But
game was scarce and Jack was returning to Gardiner empty-handed and
disgusted. They stopped for a moment's greeting when Day said: "Huntin's
played out now. How'll you swap that quirt for my rifle?" A month before
Josh would have scorned the offer. A ten-dollar