For the first time he marked clearly the silent tread, the peculiar alertness of his carriage, and most of all the dark surface-lights in his eyes. As they headed deeper into the thickets a strange change seemed to come over the man. Perhaps the liquor was dying in him, too, or possibly Gaylord’s imagination was playing tricks upon him. He received an odd impression that hitherto his guide had been asleep and had just now wakened. They were near the sheep camp now; they could hear the faint bleat of the bedding animals, and the Indian seemed to forget the other’s presence. All at once he began to stalk in earnest. He slackened his pace: Gaylord behind him slackened his. The moccasined feet had fallen softly before; now they seemingly made no sound at all. The dark eyes brightened, the muscles rippled under the dusky skin, a new vitality seemed to come over him. The truth was that this son of a savage race had not undergone so great degeneration but that he still responded to the age-old intoxication of the falling night. It was the hunting hour, and Hugh could imagine the tawny cougar, Broken Fang, whom he had come to slay, responding in the same way. Abruptly the Indian paused and held up his hand. Hugh crept near. “—— Big animal—close,” the guide whispered. “Maybe you get a shot.” Hugh stood still, listening. Far distant he heard the usual, faint mysterious sounds that the early night hours always bring to the wilderness world; but if anything, the primordial silence was more heavy and portentous than ever. The snow peaks still gleamed faintly, and he sensed their majesty and grandeur as never before. It was not alone an impression of beauty. Beauty is an external thing alone: in this moment of farseeing, he understood something of their mighty symbolism, their eternal watch over the waste places. He saw them as they were: grand, silent, unutterably aloof. “How do you know?” he asked, in reply to his guide. “I don’t hear anything.” The truth was that Pete would have found considerable difficulty in telling just how he knew. Rather it was a sixth sense, an essence in the air that blunter senses could not have perceived. “We’re near flock—maybe lot of varmints hanging close. Always is—around sheep. Don’t know what animal came near just now—cougar, I think.” “Maybe old Broken Fang himself?” “I don’t know. Heap maybe not. Country’s big.” Pete was given to telling lies, on occasion, but he had told the truth for once. Hugh’s eyes leaped from peak to peak, and he began to realize something of the vast, tremendous distances of the region. They pushed on, over the ridge and through the last of a heavy wall of brush.