xciting days Timmins searched in vain alike
the dark cedar swamps and the high, broken spurs of the mountain.
Then, one windless afternoon, when the forest scents came rising to
him on the clear air, far up the steep he found a climbing trail
between gray, shelving ledges. Stealthy as a lynx he followed,
expecting at the next turn to come upon the lair of the enemy. It was
a just expectation, but as luck would have it, that next turn, which
would have led him straight to his goal, lay around a shoulder of rock
whose foundations had been loosened by the rains. With a kind of long
growl, rending and sickening, the rock gave way, and sank beneath
Timmins' feet.

Moved by the alert and unerring instinct of the woodsman, Timmins
leaped into the air. Both high and wide he sprang, and so escaped
being engulfed in the mass which he had dislodged. On the top of the
ruin he fell, but he fell far and hard; and for some fifteen or twenty
minutes after that fall he lay very still, while the dust and debris
settled into silence under the quiet flooding of the sun.

At last he opened his eyes. For a moment he made no effort to move,
but lay wondering where he was. A weight was on his legs, and glancing
downward, he saw that he was half covered with earth and rubbish. Then
he remembered. Was he badly hurt? He was half afraid, now, to make
the effort to move, lest he should find himself incapable of it.
Still, he felt no serious pain. His head ached, to be sure; and he saw
that his left hand was bleeding from a gash at the base of the thumb.
That hand still clutched one of the heavy traps which he had been
carrying, and it was plainly the trap that had cut him, as if in a
frantic effort to escape. But where was his rifle? Cautiously turning
his head, he peered around for it, but in vain, for during the fall it
had flown far aside into the thickets. As he stared solicitously, all
at once his dazed and sluggish senses sprang to life again with a
scorching throb, which left a chill behind it. There, not ten paces
away, sitting up on its haunches and eying him contemplatively, was a
gigantic wolf, much bigger, it seemed to him, than any wolf had any
right to be.

Timmins' first instinct was to spring to his feet, with a yell that
would give the dreadful stranger to understand that he was a fellow it
would not be well to tamper with. But his woodcraft stayed him. He was
not by any means sure that he _could_ spring to his feet. Still less