brupt change from city to unspoiled
wilderness.

When his companion stopped to let the horses "get their wind," Jack
would turn in the saddle and look back over the network of gulches
and deep canyons to where the valley peeped up at him shyly through
the trees, and would think that every step made him that much safer.
He did not face calmly the terror from which he had fled. Still
mentally breathless from the very unexpectedness of the catastrophe,
he shrank from the thought of it as if thinking would betray him. He
had not so far concerned himself with his future, except as it held
the possibility of discovery. So he quizzed his companion and got him
talking about the mountains over which he was to play guardian angel.

He heard a good deal about hunting and fishing; and when they climbed
a little higher, Hank Brown pointed out to him where a bear and two
half grown cubs had been killed the fall before. He ought to have a
rifle, said Hank. There was always the chance that he might get a shot
at a bear; and as for deer, the woods were full of them. Then he told
more stories and pointed out the very localities where the incidents
had occurred.

"See that rocky peak over there? That's where the bears hole up in the
winter. Network of caves, up there. King Solomon's the name the people
that live here call it--but it's down on the map as Grizzly Peak.
Ain't any grizzlies, though--black bear mostly. They're smaller and
they ain't so fighty."

It was on the tip of Jack's tongue to observe that a man might hide
out here for months and months and never be seen, much less caught;
but he checked himself, and remarked only that he would certainly have
to get a gun. He would like, he declared, to take home some good
heads, and maybe a bear skin or two. He forced himself to speak of
home in the careless tone of one who has nothing to hide, but the
words left an ache in his throat and a dull heaviness in his chest.

Hank Brown went on talking and saw nothing wrong with his mood.
Indeed, he never saw anything wrong with a man who would listen to
Hank's hunting and fishing stories and not bore him with stories of
his own prowess. Wherefore, Jack was left alone in peace to fight the
sudden, nauseating wave of homesickness, and in a little while found
himself listening to the steady monotone of Hank Brown's voice.

So, they came to a tiny, sunken meadow, one side of which was fenced
with poles, rimmed round with hills set thick w