ken bits and bridles, and remnants of exploded hand-grenades, and a
burst gun-barrel, all lying on the bank of a lovely mountain stream at
the point where he crossed it, as it flowed, crystal clear, through this
sequestered bosky nook.

Something of a job this transit was, for with the spring freshets the
water was high and the current strong, and he was compelled to use only
one hand for swimming, the other holding high out of the water's reach
his powder horn. For, despite any treaties of peace, this was no country
for a man to traverse unarmed, and an encounter with an inimical
wandering Indian might serve to make for his comrades' curiosity
concerning his fate, when they should chance to have leisure to feel it,
a perpetual conundrum.

He had never, however, made so lonely a journey. Not one human being did
he meet--neither red man nor white--in all the long miles of the endless
wilderness; naught astir save the sparse vernal shadows in the budding
woods and the gentle spring zephyr swinging past and singing as it went.
Now and again he noted how the sun slowly dropped down the skies that
were so fine, so fair, so blue that it seemed loath to go and leave the
majestic peace of the zenith. The stars scintillated in the dark night
as if a thousand bivouac fires were kindled in those far spaces of the
heavens responsive to the fire which he kept aglow to cook the supper
that his rifle fetched him and to ward off the approach of wolf or
panther while he slept. He was doubtless in jeopardy often enough, but
chance befriended him and he encountered naught inimical till the fourth
day when he came in at the gate of the station and met the partners of
the hunt, themselves not long since arrived.

They waited for no reproaches for their desertion. They were quick to
upbraid. As they hailed him in chorus he was bewildered for a moment,
and stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust
back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he
listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and
leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an
intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how
the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of
the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the
misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could
be seen aglow on the hearths