er the
wilderness, and then returning in its melancholy whine. Instantly
setting his lips and swelling all the muscles of his mighty throat he
gave back the cry, long, full and a match in its loneliness and ferocity
for the owl's own call. Then he crouched so close that he seemed fairly
to press himself into the earth.

He saw the owl on the bough move a little and he knew that it was in a
state of stupid amazement. Like the panther its brain was adapted only
to its own affairs and environment, else it would have made some
progress in all the ages, and the cry of an owl coming from the ground
when owls usually cried from trees was more than it could understand.
Nevertheless it soon gave forth its long complaining note once more, and
Henry promptly matched it. He was thinking not so much of its effect
upon the owl as upon the Indians. Delicate as their senses were, they
were not as delicate as his, and they might think the two notes were
those of challenge indicating that the whole five, reinforced perhaps by
a half dozen stalwart hunters, were within the ring, ready and eager to
give battle, setting in very truth a trap of their own.

He heard presently the cry of a wolf from a point at least a half mile
away, and it was answered from another segment of the circle at an
equal distance. The sounds, as he easily discerned, were made by
warriors, and it was absolutely certain now that the voices of the owls
had caused them to pause and think. Having thus started this train he
felt that he could wait and see what would happen, but he was stirred by
curiosity, and he pulled himself forward until the thicket ended, and
the earth fell away into the deep ravine that ran before the stony
hollow.

He kept himself hidden in the edge of the dense bushes, but he could see
in various directions. The great owl on the bough was quivering a
little, as if it were still amazed and terrified by the answer to its
own calls, coming from the heart of the earth itself and surcharged with
mystery. The moonlight turned it to a feathery mass of silver in which
the cruel beak and claws showed like sharp pieces of steel. Yet the bird
did not fly away, and Henry knew that it was held by fear as well as
curiosity, the dangers near seeming less than those far.

He looked then down into the ravine, and he was startled by the sight of
the wolf pack at full attention. The wolves of the Mississippi Valley
were not as large as the great timber wolf of