“I don’t think she could be scornful—if the peasant has given—everything he has.” “I don’t think it would be quite fair either—although, of course, he might ask for things that she couldn’t grant. And that, perhaps, will be the way it is with me.” She looked up, a strange mist and glory in her eyes. “What do you mean, Hugh?” He heard the crackle of the fire, the stir of the wind behind her, the soft complaint of the sheep, stirring in their sleep, but most of all he discerned the music, the unutterable loveliness in her tones. “I mean that when this fight is won—I’m going to put my petitions to the queen.” CHAPTER XXIII In the still midday, desperate and half-mad with hunger, Broken Fang, the cougar, came stealing along a narrow pass in the high ranges of Smoky Land. He hadn’t had a great deal of success with the mountain creatures. The previous day he had caught a little pika on the sliderock; once a mountain grouse had failed to detect him lying like a tawny piece of crag beside a pass, but the great bighorn themselves had mostly been able to keep out of his way. In the first place he was under the great disadvantage of fighting in the enemy’s country. The cougars are never quite at home in the high mountains. They are essentially a lowland people, and they have no love for the fields of glittering snow. They need trees in which to hide, brush thickets to wait in till the deer graze near by. The narrow passes, the rugged precipices, and the high knife-edge trails were the natural habitats of the wild sheep, but Broken Fang liked better walking. Besides, he didn’t know the country. If any one supposes that animals do not have to learn the geographical nature of a hunting ground before they are really adept in it, it is wholly plain that he has never followed the tracks of a pack of strange wolves in a new land. By knowing all the trails, the bighorn were able to avoid the traps that Broken Fang so laboriously set. More than once, after a weary half-day’s wait, he would find to his chagrin that the sure-footed sheep had been watching him—chuckling no doubt among themselves—from a nearby promontory. They knew how to see him before he saw them, and in a fair chase he was simply out of the running. If his luck didn’t change soon, it seemed very likely that the buzzards would have a large heap of poorly upholstered bones to pick clean. But to-night—as September days rolled to their mellow end—he had fresh hopes. For the wind had come and brought him good news. The flock was feeding on a little grass slope just in front.