ped, and dived in. He went down like a plummet,
reckless of the danger of striking some upjutting ledge. He may have
forgotten for the moment his word to the girl, or he may have
considered that it did not prevent him from courting death by
accident.

But, deeply as he dived, he failed to reach bottom. He came up,
puffing and blowing, and swam swiftly around the pool before
scrambling out to dress. The combined effect of the vigorous exercise,
the grateful coolness of the water, and the riddance of the day's dust
and sweat brought him ashore in a far less morbid frame of mind. Going
up the bank, he pulled the hind quarters of veal from the tree and
sliced off three or four ragged strips with his knife. After washing
them, he put them to broil over his smoky fire of green twigs. The
"cutlets" came off, one half raw and the other half burned to a crisp.
But he had not eaten since the early forenoon. He devoured the mess
without salt, ravenously. He topped off with the scant swallow of
brandy left in his flask.

Stimulated by the food and drink, he set about gathering a large heap
of wood. Three or four coyotes had approached his camp, attracted by
the scent of the calf meat. With the fading of twilight into night
they came in closer, making such a racket with their yelping and
wailing that he thought himself surrounded by a pack of ravenous
wolves.

He could not see how his pony was unconcernedly grazing within a few
yards of one of the cowardly beasts. Had the wistful singers been
timber wolves, the animal soon would have come hobbling in near the
fire; but Ashton did not know that. He flung on brush and crouched
down near the blaze, rifle in hand, peering out into the blackness.
Every moment he expected to hear that terrible cry of which he had
read, the death-scream of a horse, and then to hear the crunching of
bones between the jaws of the ferocious wolves.

He had spent the previous night alone in camp, peacefully sleeping.
But then the yells of the beasts of darkness had been far away, and
the walls of his tent had shut him in from the wild. Tonight his
nerves had been shattered by the terrible blow of his father's
repudiation. Worst of all, he had no tobacco with which to soothe
them.

His dread of the supposed wolf pack in a way eased the anguish of
his ruin by diverting his mind. But the lack of cigarettes served
only to put a more frightful strain on his overwrought nerves. He
felt it first in a vague di