took down his gun
quietly, and turned round. Then he spoke softly:

"To kill the puma, you must watch--always watch. You will see his yellow
eyes sometimes in a tree: you must be ready before he springs. You will
hear his breath at night as you pretend to sleep, and you wait till you
see his foot steal out of the shadow--then you have him. From a mountain
wall you watch in the morning, and, when you see him, you follow, and
follow, and do not rest till you have found him. You must never miss
fire, for he has great strength and a mad tooth. But when you have got
him, he is worth all. You cannot eat the grizzly--he is too thick and
coarse; but the puma--well, you had him from the pot to-night. Was he
not good?"

Lawless's brows ran up in surprise. Shon spoke quickly:

"Heaven above!" he burst out. "Was it puma we had betune the teeth?
And what's puma but an almighty cat? Sure, though, it wint as tinder as
pullets, for all that--but I wish you hadn't tould us."

The old man stood leaning on his gun, his chin on his hands, as they
covered the muzzle, his eyes fixed on something in his memory, the
vision of incidents he had lived or seen.

Lawless went over to the fire and relit his pipe. Shon followed him.
They both watched Pourcette. "D'ye think he's mad?" asked Shon in a
whisper. Lawless shook his head: "Mad? No. But there's more in this
puma-hunting than appears. How long has he lived here, did he say?"

"Four years; and, durin' that time, yours and mine are the only white
faces he has seen, except one."

"Except one. Well, whose was the one? That might be interesting. Maybe
there's a story in that."

"Faith, Lawless, there's a story worth the hearin', I'm thinkin',
to every white man in this country. For the three years I was in
the mounted police, I could count a story for all the days o' the
calendar--and not all o' them would make you happy to hear."

Pourcette turned round to them. He seemed to be listening to Shon's
words. Going to the wall, he hung up the rifle; then he came to the fire
and stood holding out his hands to the blaze. He did not look in the
least mad, but like a man who was dominated by some one thought, more
or less weird. Short and slight, and a little bent, but more from
habit--the habit of listening and watching--than from age, his face
had a stern kind of earnestness and loneliness, and nothing at all of
insanity.

Presently Lawless went to a corner and from his kit drew forth a fla