ad passed from him, and another fever was on him.
The others urged him to come away. The winter would soon be hard on
them; he must go, and he and Lawless would return in the spring.

Prevailing on him at last, they started back to Clear Mountain. The
first day Shon was abstracted. He carried the gold he had gathered in
a bag wound about his body. It was heavy, and he could not travel fast.
One morning, Pourcette, who had been off in the hills, came to say that
he had sighted a little herd of wapiti. Shon had fallen and sprained his
arm the evening before (gold is heavy to carry), and he did not go with
the others. He stayed and dreamed of his good fortune, and of his home.
In the late afternoon he lay down in the sun beside the camp-fire
and fell asleep from much thinking. Lawless and Pourcette had little
success. The herd had gone before they arrived. They beat the hills,
and turned back to camp at last, without fret, like good sportsmen. At a
point they separated, to come down upon the camp at different angles, in
the hope of still getting a shot. The camp lay exposed upon a platform
of the mountain.

Lawless came out upon a ledge of rock opposite the camp, a gulch lying
between. He looked across. He was in the shadow, the other wall of the
gulch was in the sun. The air was incomparably clear and fresh, with an
autumnal freshness. Everything stood out distinct and sharply outlined,
nothing flat or blurred. He saw the camp, and the fire, with the smoke
quivering up in a diffusing blue column, Shon lying beside it. He leaned
upon his rifle musingly. The shadows of the pines were blue and
cold, but the tops of them were burnished with the cordial sun, and
a glacier-field, somehow, took on a rose and violet light, reflected,
maybe, from the soft-complexioned sky. He drew in a long breath of
delight, and widened his line of vision.

Suddenly, something he saw made him lurch backward. At an angle in
almost equal distance from him and Shon, upon a small peninsula of rock,
a strange thing was happening. Old Pourcette was kneeling, engaged with
his moccasin. Behind him was the sun, against which he was abruptly
defined, looking larger than usual. Clear space and air soft with colour
were about him. Across this space, on a little sloping plateau near him,
there crept an animal. It seemed to Lawless that he could see the lithe
stealthiness of its muscles and the ripple of its skin. But that was
imagination, because he was too