ous senses attuned, and with
that sixth sense which came from the perfect coordination of the others
ready to help him.

He examined as well as he could from his summit the maze of hills in
which he stood, and it seemed to him to be a region three or four miles
square, a network of crests, ridges, cups, and narrow valleys like
ravines. He resolved that for the present, at least, he would make no
attempt to break from it and pass the Indian lines. He would be for a
day or two the needle in the haystack. One might move from cover to
cover and evade pursuit for a long time in a tumbled and tangled mass of
country fifteen or sixteen miles square, covered moreover with heavy
vegetation of all kinds.

He had been the panther before, now he would be the fox, and leaping
from stone to stone, and from fallen trunk to fallen trunk he plunged
into the very heart of the maze, finding it wilder and even more broken
than he had hoped. Small streams were flowing in several of the gullies
or ravines, and there were pools, around which reeds and bushes grew
thickly. At least he would not suffer for water while he lay in hiding.

Near the center of the little wilderness was a valley larger than the
others, but before he descended into it he climbed a hill, and took
another long look around the whole horizon. The smoke signals had
increased to nearly a dozen, making a complete circuit of the hills, and
it would have been obvious, even to an intelligence much less acute than
his, that they were sure he was in the hills, and had drawn their lines
about him.

Well, it would be a chase, he said to himself grimly. He did not
particularly like the role of fox, but once he had undertaken it he
would play it to the last detail. He went down into the valley which
was like a bowl filled with a vast mass of bushes and briars, many of
the briars covered with ripe berries, a fact of which he made a mental
note, as he might need those berries later on, and picked a way through
them until he came to the other slope, which was as rough and broken as
if it had been taken up by an earthquake, shaken for several days, and
then allowed to lie as the pieces fell. There were many blind openings,
like the box canyons of the west, running back into the hills, and they
were crossed by other gullies and ravines, and he decided that he would
find a temporary covert somewhere among them.

As he wandered about in the maze of bushes and stones, he did not
neglec