With a piece of cord he found in his pocket he made a trap--a noose suspended from a bent sapling--and caught a rabbit. This kept him in food for two days, then setting it again he broke the cord, and driven by hunger went forth, revolver in hand. He saw fresh deer tracks, and was lucky enough to find his quarry, steal close and shoot it. His hunger made him reckless and he lit a fire, roasting the meat on planted sticks. But the birds came and wheeled about overhead and the specks of moving birds in the sky can be seen from afar. His forces restored by nourishment he grew restless. The loneliness of the place oppressed him and he wanted to hear of Knapp. Knapp had been caught and Knapp would talk and he burned to know what Knapp would say of him. He was sure the man knew little; he had foreseen such a catastrophe and been as secret as the grave, but Knapp might have picked up something. Anyway he wanted to know just how he stood. Food, his greatest need, supplied, his next was news, someone to tell him, or a newspaper. The people who stood in with him were scattered far. Up beyond Angels the Garcias were his friends, and over to the left, on the bend of the river near Pine Flat, Old Man Haley, reputed cracked and a survivor of the great days of the lode, had been his confederate from the start. But Haley's shack was too near Pine Flat, and now with a reward probably offered, he feared the Garcias--greasers, father and son, not to be trusted. The wisest course was to lie low and keep to himself, anyway till he knew more. So he tracked across the country from landmark to landmark, a cave, an abandoned tunnel, the shell of a ruined cabin. He left the foothills and went back toward the mountain spurs where ridge rises beyond ridge, and at the bottom of ravines rivers lie like yellow threads. Nature held him aloof, an atom leaving no mark upon it, an intruder on its musing self-engrossment. He moved, secure and solitary, seeing no living thing but the game he shot and the hawk hanging poised in the blue. Sometimes he sat for hours watching its winged shadow float over the tree tops. Finally he knew he would have to return to the settlements, for his store of cartridges was almost exhausted. He tried to hoard them, eking out his deer meat with roots and berries till body and nerve began to weaken. That decided him and he started back, eating only just enough to give him strength to get there. He was nearly spent when he found himself once more among the chaparral's low growth, looking down on the brown and green fields.