Lazily opening my eyes I gazed a moment at the sun just peeping over the mountain, then closed them again; but when I attempted to change my position a sharp pain in my ankle thoroughly awakened me. Still I lay quiet because it was some time before I could collect my scattered senses and separate in my mind the real incident and the dream phantasms. The pain in my ankle, the swelled and irritated condition of my nose plainly proved to me that there was no dream about my injuries, but I discovered that my head and leg were neatly bandaged with strips of fine linen. I sat for a while busily collecting the incidents of the past twenty-four hours, arranging them in my mind in their proper order and place. I cut out the dream portion from the realities with very little trouble until I reached the part where I had awakened in the night and had seen the wolves, the eagle and the Wild Hunter. I could not be sure whether that was a dream or reality. Had I seen this strange old man with his eagle and his wolf pack beside our camp fire or had I dreamed it? Had this hobgoblin man, who might be my own father, rescued me from death at the claws of the grizzly and bound my wounds for me, or was that but a dream too? Had not Big Pete saved me perhaps and cared for me afterward? “Pete, old fellow,” I said presently, rising to my elbow, “who brought me to camp? Who killed that bear? Who saved our lives?” “The Wild Hunter,” replied Pete gravely. “He bathed my head with some sort of good smelling stuff and, though I am as heavy as a dead buffaler, toted me to camp; he ’lowed that I was all sort of shuk up and a little hazy; he fixed my blanket, then he fotched you in on his shoulders just as if you was a dead antelope, fixed you up with bandages torn from handkerchiefs in your pocket, gave you a drink which you didn’t seem to appreciate, but just swallowed like you were asleep, then he laid you out. I had my eye peeled on him but he said nary a word, an’ when we wuz both all comfortable he pulled out a long cigar, sot down by the fire and was smoking tha’ with his bird and his wolves around him when I went to sleep. “He cut his bullets out, as he allus does,” muttered Pete a little while later. “Who cut what bullets?” I asked. “Whomsoever cud I mean but th’ Wild Hunter, and wha’s tha’ been any bullets lately but in th’ b’ar?” queried my companion. “Yes, of course,” I admitted, “but why do you suppose he cut out the bullets?” “Wal, I reckon tha’ might be right scarce and he haster be kinder sparing with them. I calculate you’d like to have a hatful of them balls, leastwise most folks would; cause the Wild Hunter don’t use no common low-flung lead for his bullets, no-sir-ree bob-horsefly! Tain’t good ’nuff for a high-cock-alorum like him—_he shoots balls of virgin gold!_”