final salute. To my
astonishment, they turned tail and came racing back, straight toward
me, but glancing back fearfully as they came. For a foolish instant I
thought they meant to attack, then the reason for their action dawned
on me. A sharp echo of each shot had been flung back by a cliff beyond
the grove. The fleeing animals on nearing the cliff had mistaken these
echoes for another pursuer. They feared the unseen gun more than the
gun in the open.

[Illustration: They turned tail and came racing back, straight toward
me.]

I killed them from the saddle. An echo had betrayed them. But they
were in unfamiliar country. I doubt if they would have been misled at
home, for animals are commonly familiar with every sight, sound and
scent of their home range, and wolves are uncannily shrewd.

Thus I learned that the same phenomenon that had confounded me deceived
the animals. Echoes make an interesting study and add mystery to the
mountains. But animals, and most woodsmen, have a sixth sense upon
which they rely, an intuitive faculty we call instinct. It is more
infallible than their conscious reasoning or physical senses of sight,
sound, smell, taste and touch. It leads them unerringly through
unblazened forests, during blinding storms or in the darkness of night.
It helps them solve the enigma of echoes, and sometimes when the
vagrant breezes trick their sensitive noses, and bring scents to them
from the opposite direction of their sources, it senses the deception,
and, setting them on the right path, delivers them from their enemies.

I suppose I must have had this instinct to some degree or I would
surely have been lost in those mountain mazes. Not that anticipation
of such a possibility would have deterred me--it would really have
added allurement to the adventure. As it was, I did get lost, but
always succeeded in finding my way home again.

But even with this instinct, people are often lost in the high country
of the Rockies. Mountain trails twist and turn, tack and loop around
unscalable cliffs. Let a stranger step off a trail for a moment to
pick a flower blooming in the shade of the surrounding woods, and,
unless he be an outdoor man, he is liable to be confused as to the
trail's location when he tries to return to it. The sudden changing
weather of high altitudes also causes the climber to lose his way. A
sky which at sunrise is as innocently blue as a baby's eyes, may be
overcast by lower