Even though the game lead him into such a place as the country of The Nameless, from which, as we all have been told from infancy, there is no escape, your true hunter cannot stand and let it go. I had been making pictures in my head for half a day's spooring, of what I should do to this great ursine brute when I caught him; I was entirely incapable of returning empty-handed. I think that even without the impetus of that furtive skulker with the arrow, I would have gone on. As it was ... I quickened my pace. The blackened plain was broader than it had seemed from the forest. I trotted briskly over it, avoiding the stinking pools, and on all its grim surface nothing moved except myself. The pugmarks of Halfspoor went straight as an owl's death-strike toward the broken cairns and ragged rocks. Biting my lips with determination, I followed them. I was in a strange state of single-mindedness, like a man drunken on fermented tree fern sap who knows only that he wants to do one thing and that, no matter how ridiculous it may be, nothing will stop him from doing it. * * * * * Already I had gone a thousand paces farther than any man of my race--save the guardians--had ever gone before. The earth beneath my bare toes was gritty, almost like powdered stone, and I did not wonder that nothing grew here except in the scummy pools of stagnant rainwater. Now the first of the queer cairns was before me. Halfspoor had gone around it. So did I. A shadow moved in the far corner of my left eye. I gazed swiftly toward it, but it was gone. A shudder ran up the back of my legs and quivered across my shoulders till my hands shook. Yet my stalking-madness would not let me be long afraid. Here was a plot of ground between two walls of unevenly-piled rocks. Trails of jackal-rats threaded its smooth surface, and across Halfspoor's prints ran those of a big lone dogwolf. I was bewildered. Could _this_ be the country of The Nameless, over which even the eagles feared to soar? Or did it lie, perhaps, beyond those bleak cliffs yonder? Here Halfspoor had caught himself a jackal-rat. Said I not that he was a foul feeder? He had torn the scavenger in two and spent five or ten minutes in wolfing down the tenderer portions. Where was he heading, this temerarious bear? What curious siren call was luring him (and quite possibly me) to destruction?