Rifle and eyes intently alert, the rider scarce noticed his rushing
mount; and if he guided with wrist and knee it was instinctive and as
though the horse were guiding them both.

And now, far ahead through this primeval stand of pine, sunshine
glimmered, warning of a clearing. And here Trooper Lannis pulled in his
horse at the edge of what seemed to be a broad, flat meadow, vividly
green.

But it was the intense, arsenical green of hair-fine grass that covers
with its false velvet those quaking bogs where only a thin, crust-like
skin of root-fibre and vegetation cover infinite depths of silt.

The silt had no more substance than a drop of ink colouring the water in
a tumbler.

Sitting his fast-breathing mount, Lannis searched this wide, flat
expanse of brilliant green. Nothing moved on it save a great heron
picking its deliberate way on stilt-like legs. It was well for Quintana
that he had not attempted it.

Very cautiously Lannis walked his horse along the hard ground which
edged this marsh on the west. Nowhere was there any sign that Quintana
had come down to the edge among the shrubs and swale grasses.

Beyond the marsh another trooper patrolled; and when at length he and
Lannis perceived each other and exchanged signals, the latter wheeled
his horse and retraced his route at an easy canter, satisfied that
Quintana had not yet broken cover.

Back through the first growth he cantered, his rifle at a ready,
carefully scanning the more open woodlands, and so came again to the
cross-roads.

And here stood a State Game Inspector, with a report that some sort of
beagle-pack was hunting in the forest to the northwest; and very curious
to investigate.

So it was arranged that the Inspector should turn road-patrol and the
Trooper become the rover.

There was no sound of dogs when Lannis rode in on the narrow, spotted
trail whence he had flushed Quintana into the dense growth of saplings
that bordered it.

His horse made little noise on the moist layer of leaves and forest
mould; he listened hard for the sound of hounds as he rode; heard
nothing save the chirr of red squirrels, the shriek of a watching jay,
or the startling noise of falling acorns rapping and knocking on great
limbs in their descent to the forest floor.

Once, very, very far away westward in the direction of Star Pond he
fancied he heard a faint vibration in the air that might have been
hounds baying.

He was right. And at that very m