第21章

In the early morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold.His hands were so numb that he had difficulty starting a fire.He stood over the blaze, warming them.The air was nipping, clear and thin, and sweet with frosty fragrance.

Daylight came while he was in the midst of his morning meal.A white frost covered the ground and crackled under his feet as he went out to bring in the horses.He saw fresh deer tracks.Then he went back to camp for his rifle.

Keeping a sharp lookout for game, he continued his search for the horses.

The forest was open and park-like.There were no fallen trees or evidences of fire.Presently he came to a wide glade in the midst of which Nagger and the pack-mustang were grazing with a herd of deer.The size of the latter amazed Slone.The deer he had hunted back on the Sevier range were much smaller than these.Evidently these were mule deer, closely allied to the elk.They were so tame they stood facing him curiously, with long ears erect.It was sheer murder to kill a deer standing and watching like that, but Slone was out of meat and hungry and facing a long, hard trip.He shot a buck, which leaped spasmodically away, trying to follow the herd, and fell at the edge of the glade.Slone cut out a haunch, and then, catching the horses, he returned to camp, where he packed and saddled, and at once rode out on the dim trail.

The wildness of the country he was entering was evident in the fact that as he passed the glade where he had shot the deer a few minutes before, there were coyotes quarreling over the carcass.

Stone could see ahead and on each side several hundred yards, and presently he ascertained that the forest floor was not so level as he had supposed.He had entered a valley or was traversing a wide, gently sloping pass.He went through thickets of juniper, and had to go around clumps of quaking aspen.The pines grew larger and farther apart.Cedars and pinyons had been left behind, and he had met with no silver spruces after leaving camp.Probably that point was the height of a divide.There were banks of snow in some of the hollows on the north side.Evidently the snow had very recently melted, and it was evident also that the depth of snow through here had been fully ten feet, judging from the mutilation of the juniper-trees where the deer, standing on the hard, frozen crust, had browsed upon the branches.

The quiet of the forest thrilled Slone.And the only movement was the occasional gray flash of a deer or coyote across a glade.No birds of any species crossed Stone's sight.He came, presently, upon a lion track in the trail, made probably a day before.Slone grew curious about it, seeing how it held, as he was holding, to Wildfire's tracks.After a mile or so he made sure the lion had been trailing the stallion, and for a second he felt a cold contraction of his heart.Already he loved Wildfire, and by virtue of all this toil of travel considered the wild horse his property.

"No lion could ever get close to Wildfire," he soliloquized, with a short laugh.Of that he was absolutely certain.

The sun rose, melting the frost, and a breath of warm air, laden with the scent of pine, moved heavily under the huge, yellow trees.Slone passed a point where the remains of an old camp-fire and a pile of deer antlers were further proof that Indians visited this plateau to hunt.From this camp broader, more deeply defined trails led away to the south and east.Slone kept to the east trail, in which Wildfire's tracks and those of the lion showed clearly.It was about the middle of the forenoon when the tracks of the stallion and lion left the trail to lead up a little draw where grass grew thick.Slone followed, reading the signs of Wildfire's progress, and the action of his pursuer, as well as if he had seen them.Here the stallion had plowed into a snow-bank, eating a hole two feet deep; then he had grazed around a little; then on and on; there his splendid tracks were deep in the soft earth.Slone knew what to expect when the track of the lion veered from those of the horse, and he followed the lion tracks.The ground was soft from the late melting of snow, and Nagger sunk deep.The lion left a plain track.

Here he stole steadily along; there he left many tracks at a point where he might have halted to make sure of his scent.He was circling on the trail of the stallion, with cunning intent of ambush.The end of this slow, careful stalk of the lion, as told in his tracks, came upon the edge of a knoll where he had crouched to watch and wait.

From this perch he had made a magnificent spring--Slone estimating it to be forty feet-but he had missed the stallion.There were Wildfire's tracks again, slow and short, and then deep and sharp where in the impetus of fright he had sprung out of reach.A second leap of the lion, and then lessening bounds, and finally an abrupt turn from Wildfire's trail told the futility of that stalk.

Slone made certain that Wildfire was so keen that as he grazed along he had kept to open ground.

Wildfire had run for a mile, then slowed down to a trot, and he had circled to get back to the trail he had left.Slone believed the horse was just so intelligent.At any rate, Wildfire struck the trail again, and turned at right angles to follow it.

Here the forest floor appeared perfectly level.Patches of snow became frequent, and larger as Slone went on.At length the patches closed up, and soon extended as far as he could see.It was soft, affording difficult travel.

Slone crossed hundreds of deer tracks, and the trail he was on eventually became a deer runway.

Presently, far down one of the aisles between the great pines Slone saw what appeared to be a yellow cliff, far away.It puzzled him.And as he went on he received the impression that the forest dropped out of sight ahead.Then the trees grew thicker, obstructing his view.Presently the trail became soggy and he had to help his horse.The mustang floundered in the soft snow and earth.

Cedars and pinyons appeared again, making travel still more laborious.