They both laughed and went on--through brushy tangles; over rocky ridges; through spacious forests; across soft, springy meadows; up slope, down slope; on and on and endlessly on. Once they frightened a young bear that was tearing away as if its life depended upon it upon an old stump; the bear snorted and went lumbering away, as Deveril said, like a young freight-train gone mad; Lynette, as she admitted afterward, was twice as frightened, but did not run, herself, because the bear ran first and because she couldn't get the hang of her feet as quickly as he could! They came upon several bands of mountain-quail, which shot away, buzzing like overgrown bees; Deveril hurled stones and curses at many a scampering rabbit; once she and once he caught a glimpse of that dark gleam, come and gone in a flash, which might have been coyote or timber-wolf.... They did not speak of Bruce Standing. But they wondered, both of them.... Toward four o'clock in the afternoon they heard for the second time the crack of a rifle-shot. Farther to the south of them this time; a hint farther eastward; fainter than when first heard. Taggart, they held in full confidence, was following the trail which they had mapped for him; he was going on steadily; he was forging ahead of them. And yet they were content that this was so. They rested more often; they relaxed more and more. And before the brief reverberations of a distant rifle-shot had done echoing through the gorges, they came to a full stop and determined to make camp. Not for a second, all day long, had Deveril swerved from his determination to "dig in in comfort for the night." They were, as both were willing to admit, "done in." Deveril employed his pocket-knife, long ago dulled, and now whetted after a fashion upon a rough stone, to whack off small pine and willow and the more leafy of sage branches. He made of them a goodly heap. Then he gathered dead limbs, fallen from the parent trees, making his second pile. All the while Lynette kept a small dry-wood and pine-cone fire going hotly; little smoke, little swirl of sparks to rise above the grove in which they were encamping; plenty of heat for body warmth and for cooking. She was preoccupied, moving about listlessly. So this was Bruce Standing's country? She looked about her with an ever-deepening interest; this was a fitting land for such a man. Bigness and dominance and a certain vital freshness struck altogether the key-note here--and suggested Timber-Wolf. If he were not dead after all---- Well, then, he would be somewhere near now for like a wounded animal, he would have returned to his solitudes.