yes. They
aren't mates. They light up weirdly when he's drunk or excited, and
if you know what's healthy, you get out of the way."

By eight o'clock that evening most of the valley's deer-hunters, all
of the local adventurers who could buy, borrow or beg a rifle, and
the usual quota of high-school sons of thoughtless parents were off
on the man-hunt in the eastern mountains.

Among them was Sheriff Crumpett's party. On reaching the timberline
they separated. It was agreed that if any of them found signs of
Ruggam, the signal for assistance was five shots in quick succession
"and keep shooting at intervals until the rest come up."

We newspaper folk awaited the capture with professional interest and
pardonable excitement....

In the northern part of our town, a mile out on the Wickford road,
is the McBride place. It is a small white house with a red barn in
the rear and a neat rail fence inclosing the whole. Six years ago
Cora McBride was bookkeeper in the local garage. Her maiden name was
Allen. The town called her "Tomboy Allen." She was the only daughter
of old Zeb Allen, for many years our county game-warden. Cora, as we
had always known--and called--her, was a full-blown, red-blooded,
athletic girl who often drove cars for her employer in the days when
steering-wheels manipulated by women were offered as clinching proof
that society was headed for the dogs.

Duncan McBride was chief mechanic in the garage repairshop. He was
an affable, sober, steady chap, popularly known as "Dunk the
Dauntless" because of an uncanny ability to cope successfully with
the ailments of 90 per cent, of the internal-combustion hay-balers
and refractory tin-Lizzies in the county when other mechanics had
given them up in disgust.

When he married his employer's bookkeeper, Cora's folks gave her a
wedding that carried old Zeb within half an hour of insolvency and
ran to four columns in the local daily. Duncan and the Allen girl
motored to Washington in a demonstration-car, and while Dunk was
absent, the yard of the garage resembled the premises about a
junkshop. On their return they bought the Johnson place, and Cora
quickly demonstrated the same furious enthusiasm for homemaking and
motherhood that she had for athletics and carburetors.

Three years passed, and two small boys crept about the yard behind
the white rail fence. Then--when Duncan and his wife were "making a
great go of matrimony" in typical Yankee fashion--came the tra