THE FOREST FEUD.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1789, 20 June 1906, Page 6

THE FOREST FEUD.

(By Raymond L. Spears.)

A tall, lithe man came down the Little Mink Valley wearing his dim-splint pack-basket like a saddle on his back. In his right hand he carried a tiny rifle, which looked like a squirrel-gun, but which really was a .30-.30 carbine repeater. At intervals he stopped and listened, evidently scanning the woods for something other than game, for he tramped through tile witchhop piles and over the spruce points without regard to deercover. When bs came in sight of the blazed trail La the valley, he examined it from a distance, but did not follow it.

Behind him, four miles away, on the edge of the State reservoir, were large white signs wliich explained his caution. One read: PRIVATE PARK 1 Hunting Fishing, or Camping On These Grounds Is Prohibited. HUNTERS’ CLUB. More than eighty thousand acres of forest land, dotted ovor with lakes and ponds, and covered with a wilderness broken only by small beaver-meadows and a burning, were reserved by the Hunters’ Club for tile exclusive use of its members, vrito shot door, caught trout, and camped wherever they wished.

The man with the pack was a poacher who was seeking the depths of the park preserve in order to kill deer for jerked venison. He had need of caution, for only a few days previous one of his i friends had go no to jail to "live out” | a twenty-five-dollar fine for trespass, i “I wish I knowod where that, plaguy ! Grail's party is!” the poacher said to ! himself. “They got a tent, and are ! liahle to lay down this brook any- ■ where.”

Grail was a club guide who had come into the Little Mink Valley four days before with some sportsmen, and the poacher must locate their camp before placing his own. Coming down the long Jant of a beech-flat at the edge of tho burning he found a pair of buck saddles hung over a cherry-tree limb. “It’s old,” the poacher said. “They’ve left it till they ootne out to save lugging. Their camp’s below here somewhere.”

Having made this disoovery, he started diagonally back up the other side of the valley, and soon found himself beside a thread of water flowing doAvn to the Little Mink. “I’ll camp on this somewhere,” the u,an said to himself. 'T want a good, tight place—those cusses are likely to hunt up this way.” Down the streamlet was open hardweed, but a quarter of a mile above the trickle of water came from a thicket of evergreens. This was what the hunter wanted, for here he could hide his camp. Having made an oil-cloth lean-to, eaten Ids supper, and smoked « his pipe, he rolled up in his blanket. His laso thoughts were of an. owl that squawked in a near-by tree. “Who-ake —Who-ake 1” exclaimed the owl.

“I’m Cal Croeden 1” answered the man, for, like all woodsmen, he felt obliged to answer the questions put by birds.

\ The fire burned for horn's, snapping [ and sis&ing. Then the bed of coals glowed red and redder, until they were

crimson overlaid with grey. The man slept until toward morning, when the cold routed him out. At dawn, after hia breakfast of bread and boiled salt pork, he stepped away into the woods, climbing Little Mink Mountain as he worked toward Beaver Lake—a meathunter. • Slowly and with infinite caution he followed the great valley side, eager to catch sight of the rounded rump, the pointed nose, or the flash of a deer in alarmed flight. He eased away into the bottom undulations, where he found fresh signs? ‘Til get one here!” ho whispered exultantly, forgetting his man-.hears. He crept along with unrivalled skill for a time, and then, a hundred yards away on the side of a knoll, something quivered—a grey patch of motion. It was a deer coming down the grade diagonally toward him, perhaps to drink in the bit of brook in the hollow. Tho carbine sights' were kept close in line with the animal as the distance lessened from one hundred to seventy, and then to sixty yards —almost in what the hunter called "range.’ Suddenly,' without warning, five shots rang cut just over the knoll, nor thirty rods away. Instantly on all sides deer seemed to spring from the earth. 7 One rushed past Creeden from a patch, of witehhopplo scarcely thirty yards away.; two came straight toward him, and to Iris light he caught flashes of white flags as th.e door ran. For a moment he stood startled and dismayed. "Them’s the clubmen!" he exclaimed under his breath, and then, stooping low, lie scudded away up the bottoms, hearing tho bounding hoofs of .the deer as they outran him, their companion fugitive. The men who had been shooting now shouted.back and forth. “Which wav’d that buck go?" one cried, and the answer came clear to Croeden: ‘■Geo, seventeen ways at once!" Although ho gritted his teeth angrily because) he had not dared shoot for fear of arrest, Croeden couldn’t help grinning at that. In a few minutes he was far up the mountainside, where he swung around behind the men who were still shouting in the valley. Then he went across the Little Mink' and hunted the low' ridges beyond The Burning. He hunted, but without heart. The best of the day was already gone, and the memory of that-herd of deer, f rom which he could easily have taken one and probably two or three, kept him angry and careless. “Anywhere ei.se, bn’ I could of killed four or five of them right thar!” lie said to himself. “Best ehanct I ever had —-bviu they’d a took mo to jail for interfering with their sport! Avhnt a cur Grail is! They won’t let him cany a gym, the damned packhorse!” Twice he saw deer-flags, but his careless tread and careless glanoo cost him the good shots he might have had. When he crossed The Burning on his way to camp late in the day, feeling like a dog in a pantry, ho despoiled the deer saddles of tho long tenderloins hanging there. “What’d the hoys say to see me stealin’ venison!” ho exclaimed bitterly. “Damn the men that brought me to it!"

Ho got v’ood for his night-fire, and with no pleasant thought, passed the evening smoking moodily. “I’ll get one to-morrow!’’ he declared as ho bunked down for tho night.

CHAPTER 11. The morrow found further degradation for the South Side’s most skilful etiU-hunter. He started early, and having found where the deer ‘•'used,” made haste into the bottom along the outlet of Beaw * Hake, where the herd of deer had been. He mused glumly, over the old tracks of galloping game. Out of curiosity he went to see where the shooters had been, and easily found the kicked leaves and moss-torn logs where the “city men” had sprawled through the wilderness to their “dunderhead’s chance.” A look at the ground showed where one had stood emptying his Winchester, the bright shells catching the sunlight as they lay in the leaves.

The scuffled ground showed liow the hunter had rushed right over a decks tracks without a pause. Oreeden took the old trail, and only a hundred yards away, in. a little hollow behind a log, found a fine buck, dead. The hunters had failed to find it.

Ooeden was about to pass on, when a new thought came. “It ain’t right to waste it," be thought. “I might’s well take it.”

He had come after meat, but his soul rebelled against getting it that way. It was the depths of disgrace for him, a proud still-hunter of skill, to take a dead deer found in the wilderness.

‘Td a found that deer for them yes-, terday if they’d been decent,” ho muttered over the carcass. “They lose a nice buck, an’ me?* Some day I’ll fix them cusses for this."

As Crooden jerked the venison on the f ollowing day, the rain poured down noisily on the dry leaves. He rejoiced in that sound, both for its music, and because it made hunting quiet and good. Tiro meat prepared, he went hunting in the storm. feeling that luck would be with him. Sure enough, on a spruce-grown point up the valley, a buck with seventeen-inch antlers shook tho rain from its hack and reared its head.. The noise, the motion and the upcoming antlers directed Creeden’s gaze .aright, and as the long head came up, the carbine sights wore drawn truly. A single shot rang out, and tho deer fell floundering fco the leaves, dead. “Thar, damn you!” Crecden said, as, having dressed out the saddles and head, he struck cut, heavy laden, for the spC’u where ho had spent the night. All most noiselessly lie came down to the lingo rock that towered above his camp, and dropped the burden of meat to tho pile of firewood with a crash. “Yep 1" a startled voice exclaimed under the lean-to, and a whiskered man appeared. Oree den step pod hack in dismay, for it was tho president of the Hunters’ Club, one of Grail’s party. “Well, sir!" tho visitor said with a gn’n. “I caught you this time, didn’t. I ?” Crecden watched the man in silence. Tho sportsman, did not realise it, but Croedon was contemplating murder, for he had boon taught to bah eve that , discover-'-by a clubman or club watcher on ciub grounds meant “lawing" at least, and probably jail. CVeedon knew that tho ciub watchers had special ciders to catch him if possible, and hero the president of the club had found him in his camp. Tho woodsman’s eyes wandered from stump to slump of the yellow birch trees which lie had cub down, and mentally reckoned them up at twenty-five dollars per tree, tho club price for such “vandaiism." “I’ve boon out ever since daybreak," the clubman babbled on in sheer delight at having some ono to talk to. "i got separated from the others early in the day somehow. 1 found some traces of doer, so I tried to follow their footsteps, but they were so intricately associated that I soon lest- sight of them. I saw a strange little animal once, a black iittiio fellow. I never saw one like it before. A fox, I prosumo, or a weasel ” “Fisher, most likely!" Croeden remarked. “You’re a clubman, ain’t you ?’ “Why, yes. Are you?” with a meaning smile* Croeden shook his head. “No-o!” the other said with mock surprise. “What are you hunting on club grounds for, then?" This was said with teasing playfulness, but Oree den bad never associated with clubmen and did not understand that it was said in fun. The club president was good-humoured, and while he awaited Crooden’s answer cut a slice from a strip of jerk over his head. “I ain’t on club grounds," Greeden said slowly, having gathered his wits. “I’m on State land, you know.” “What!" exclaimed the sportsman, jumping to his feet. “How in the world did I get here? Why—why ■” “Where’s your camp?" interrupted Croeden. “Why it’s on Little Mink Brook, just below the outlet of Beaver Lake.” “Gosh!" exclaimed Creeden, taking out his watch. “You’ll have to hustle to get that far to-night—it’s two o’clock now." The sportsman took out his owu watch. “I’m two-thirty," he said. “I guess I bo a little slow," Creeden rejoined, setting his wat-ch. “You’re on the head of Buck River," Creeden went on slowly. “You must of hunted pretty fast to get this far, It’s a good six miles to your camp from here, straight away.” The camp was really only two miles distant, but Creeden had decided what to do. The time for which he had waited so long, the time when he could take revenge on “a club sport" was at hand. “Six miles!’’ the sportsman cried, coming to Creeden’s side <f Why— why—l must be terribly lost!" “I guess you be,” was the simple response. “Well —er —my man, won’t you show me the way out? I—l left my com- ' pass in camp this morning, and the day’s so dark I can’t tell where the sun is.” “I can show ye,” Creeden said, “hut I’ll tell ye now, I think you club fellers is pretty damned fresh, asking a man if he’s a club member when Ws hunting on State land.” “I —l beg your pardon,” the visitor

said, abashed. “I supposed I was on club lands." “Well, you ain’t, and .*won’t be till you’ve tramped a while," was the answer. “Take a stick of that jerk—you’ll need it, probably, ’fore you reach camp." \Y ith his carbine in hand, Creeden turned, and the lost sportsman followed in his footsteps, awkwardly enough. Creeden’s pace was a long, fast one, and he soon had the sportsman gasping for breath. A protest against the speed brought from Creeden the reply: “YouVo a good step to go to get to Little Mink to-night. Don’t you remember crossing a little stream over yonder?" Creeden indicated the east. “Why, yes; several," was the answer. “Well, you come around the head of Antler Lake then, blow you've got to crass tho outlet—it’s a big strfoam. 1 hen go through another thick swamp, and you take tho first brook beyond the ridge, and follow it down. You may coma into Little Mink, or you may come into Bear .River, depending on the stream you hit. Then you -can toiler down o-r up to camp —down if it’s tho river, and up if it’s the brock.” “All right,’ was the answer, grateful enough. 'Then, in tho rain-dripping silence, they walked on. Creeden led the man around the foot of the Little Mink Mountain to a wide hardwood flat on the side —a flat that sloped gradually down to the bottoms of Buck River. “Now you can go down that grade, and you’ll come to the outlet of Antler Lake. You cross that, climb the ridge beyond—foller up some little brook if you want to. On the far side is Little Mink Valley. There’s two streams right where you’ll strike over the ridge. The right hand one will lead you to a place just below your camp .on Little Mink, an’ the left hand one goes to bear River. All you got to do is to go straight.” “Thank you; I’m much obliged to you,” the clubman answered gratefully, not noticing tho hardening of tho wrinkles at the corners of Creeden’s eyes. “I’m very much obliged to you.” “Just keep going straight," Creeden said. “It’s a . long ways. You can go straight, I suppose?" he added, with, a si dden thought* “I don’t know—l’m not extra skilful.” “Well, all you’ve got m do is to take three trees in a line. -See those two birches and the beech yonder? Well, come on. Now, you see there’s a cherry tree away down beyond the beech, and in a straight line—four in a straight line. You just keep picking up trees ahead of you that way, and when you get diTwn to two trees, pick up another beyond. That’ll keep you straight away, and you can’t miss it.” “Thats a. good idea! Thank you!” was the response. “Can’t I reward you ?” “Nope," Creeden said shortly. “Goodby!” CHAPTER 111. Creeden watolled the clubman as he picked liis way along, and saw him stop at inteivals to be sure he got a third tree in line with the others h© had marked. In a few minutes the grey corduroy suit faded from the woodman’s view among the trees seventy rods away. “He’s getting right thar, all right!" Creeden said to himself. “He’s goin’ right straight to hell, I reckon! Buck River? Whoop! He’ll hit Lake Chainplain first —if he lasts that long." Turning back, Creeden went to his camp and sat down to muse over the clubman and his probable adventures, heading straight for the heart of the Adirondack wilderness, and straightaway from the camp he sought. The Iwind whispered through the tree tops, and after every whisper a shower of heavy drops fell. The gusts g/ew cold as night came on, and instead of mere ram on the evergreens, the whish of sleet sounded. Creeden, grinning in his comfort, exclaimed: “He’ll run around a tree to keep .warm to-night. Gosh! What a night to lay out!" Creeden thought joyously. “I knowed ’twould come some time—and the club’s president! Whoop!” Then, at nightfall, he remembered, with a little start :

“I’ll have to go out to-morrow —Fve got all the meat I can carry." Then he skinned out the deer saddles, cutting off the great muscles by firelight. Having packed hie basket full, he “hefted" it. The weight was great, and he groaned cheerfully at the thought of the trail, and the venison gravys, fries, pot-pies, and stews there were in that mass of green and jerked meat. In the morning he took down the lean-to, and hid it with the axe and pad under a near-by rock, for future use. Then he went on his long journey homeward through the woods. Soon after he started he heard three shots in quick succession, followed a few minutes later by three more shots. “I guess there’s a man lost somewhere!" Creeden said to himself. “TO just encourage the searchers a little.” With that he fired his carbine five times jerkily, as unpractised sportsmen do. A fusillade tvas the reply. “There!’’ Creeden said between his clenched teeth. “They won’t find him to-day. Let the cuss sweat it out. He ain’t human; he ain’t even white, the dog-faced land-grabber. He and his friends have stole my hunting-country ; they sit on it when a man c( mes along. Now let him whine!” Then, satisfied in having rendered futile that day’s hunt for the missing clubman, he went up the Little Mink Valley, crossed the divide, and, before right, had his green venison in a brine and the jerk in the garret of his own home. Only the clubman had seen him, and at the Reservoir store that night he told no one of his adventures, but smoked his pipe in his usual siienoe, while the others talked of hunting and told of what they would do with dynamite and strychnine if the clubs didn’t let up driving hunters from the deer country. * * » The last president of the Hunters’ Club, not dreaming that the woodsman had sent him away from the camp into the wild forest, kept on down the slope of the wide beech flat. In due time he came to the “large stream," the “cutlet of Antler Lake,” as indeed it was. The woodsman had trusted to the 'sport’s" ignorance of woodcraft. Had the lost man stopped to think, he would have noticed that the stream was flowing toward his left, instead of to his •right, as it should have been had he really been beyond the outlet from Little Mink Creek. He crossed the stream on stones, and, with three or four trees always in Line before him “to keep himself straight,” he pressed on as rapidly as he oould. every step taking him further ft om camp and further from the trails and leads. In the dusk of late afternoon he passed the Beaver Lake trail, not seeing the heel-sodden path nor the axe-blazed trees. And soon afterward he was beyond the club line of cloth signs and in the State’s domain. As darkness came slowly into the forest, the man, growing worried, hastened his footsteps. It seemed to him that the ridge he was climbing was frightfully long, but he comforted himself ivith the thought that on the far side of it was the stream leading to his tent, where there were delicious fluids, tonics for the weary. He rejoiced in his “adventure,” and even wished he had brought his camera and photographed the lone woodsman. The way grew steeper before him. Tiie hardwood changed to a growth of g.ant hemlocks and shapely spruce, whose top branches ivere lost to sight in a grey rain-cloud. Then night fell, leaving him face to face with a steep cliff, from which ho tore the moss in a vain attempt to climb it, as he crept to and fro along the base. He wasted his precious matches, trying to see a “pass" over the top to the <f little brook leading heme.” & Then the mist that had been falling changed to a cold, clotted rain. He bad become warm with his climb, and when he stopped to think, the sleety wind chilled him through. Not being a coward, he sought shelter. and found a place under an overhang where there were a few dry leaves. Then he tried in vain to start a fire with rotten wood and wet tnoss.

iAifc last, curling down on the leaves, he pawed some over himself, and tried vainly to sleep in spite of the wind. Then he remembered the piece of meat which the woodsman had given him. He munched it with avidity. ‘Til cross the ridge to-morrow/’ he said to himself.

Too tired to lie awake, the man dozed, only to be awakened by a chill breeze, or water dropping cold on his cheek or gathering in a puddle on his collar to flow down ' his neck. The watch hands, as seen by match-light, went slowly around in half-hour jerks, cr quarter-hour ones. Then came a time when the matches were all gone, and in the dead blackness of night the man waited, shivering, for dawn which did not oome. He flung his arms violently and batted his fists against stone, skinning his knuckles when he did so. He tried to step clear of the rocks for freea* motion, and stumbled and rolled on the face of a mountain. He clutched frantically into the night and caught a sapling, by which he pulled himself back up to the shelter of the rook, and sat down again, thoroughly soared by bis fall; for he had not realised that he might he above a precipice as well as under one, having travelled alter dark. He waited for morning ,and when morning came he was looking down on a grey valley, while the rain still dripped around him. At his feet, was a gulch having jagged rooks pointing upward. He shuddered at the thought erf what might have happened to him had he fallen on them. “I’ll soon get over this ridge/ 3 he said to himself more than half aloud, “and maybe I won’t put down breakfast! Wonder what the boys’ll 6ay?” He climbed the mountainside and soon came to the back- He found it a long ridge, with the far side a gentle dope instead of a rocky steep like that which he had climbed. The good walking in prospect pleased him, and he hurried ahead, seeking for the stream the woodsman told him he would find there. At the foot of the hardwood slope he came to a balsam swamp—a thick, halfdead growth of pole saplings. He pressed through it, not seeing the course of a threadlet stream under his feet—the last trace of water bound toward Bear River which he would pass pear; hut he punched deep holes in the moss with his feet, and on the far side of the swamp he pressed up the slight grade, looking ahead for the stream he expected to find. Instead of a stream, he found a side hill, and he came to a stop, gazing through the tree tops at a mountain. “Where am IP” he exclaimed. Then, looking at his watoh, he cried, “I’ve been coming four hours this morning—three hours yesterday—only six miles to go—l’m lost! I’m lost!” In the chill fear of that thought, the man threw liis rifle to his shoulder and emptied the bullets into the air with frantic haste. Then he listened for a answer from his companions, who were just theu scrambling up Little Mink Mountain, ten miles away, answering Creeden s shots forty times. - And because he was frightened at last, the lost man fired again and again, but listened in vain for any reply. The shots were all wasted, and before he knew it he stood with an empty gun in his hands, and no shells with which to reload it. “I’ll mark some trees here,” he said to himself after a while, “and then I’ll go straight ahead—that way. Perhaps I got too far to the right.” So he hacked some trees with his knife as he tramped along, his limbs weakening with hunger and fear. At Saat, almost sick, he sat down to rest. _When he started on again, it was aimlessly down grade, the easiest way. Night found him beside a little pond in a swamp, around which he had been walking for. hours without knowing it. The third morning found him lying, gunless, hatless, and with a broken leg, at the foot of a little ledge of rook oyer which he had fallen in a mad night rush through the dark woods. In the morning the clouds were gone from the sky, and the sun, rose ahead of him.

“I got turned around!” the man muttered. “Some way, I got turned around! But maybe this is afternoon, and that is the west! Oh, my leg—my leg!”

CHAPTER TV. - Night, brought «_t-o an end a day of fruitless search for the missing president of the Hunters’ Club, and Grail, the guide, was told he ought to go out after help. So Grail, with the lantern, started up the Little Mink Brook trail to get woodsmen to help find the missing man. It was nearly, daybreak when he came down the Reservoir road to Cal Creed©n’s house, and pounded on the door. “Hello. there!” Creoden shouted from up-stairs. “Hello!”, was the reply. “This is Grail. One of them club fellers is lost. They want mo to get men to help find him. Won’t you come?” “They can go to hell—them club fellers can!” “The wages is good, Cal. Five dollars a day for you, they said. Yen could find him, knowing the country **o well. Won’t you oome. “I don’t want any of their damned

money—seek fellers as you can take itP

“Good God, Cal! You ain’t goin’ to leave him in the woods to die, he you P” “Let him die, the land-grabber! He’s stole my hunting-ground—he’s a thief, stealing my deer from me—your deer from you, if you knowed it!” The bitterness of years of dodging club watchers that he might kill “the peopier’s” deer was in Creeden’s heart, hut Grail made another appeal: “But he’s a man, Oal—he’s a man! You won’t let a man die without helping him when you can, will you?” Silence followed this appeal for a few moments, and then Oreeden said gruffly: “Well, wait a minute, an’ I’ll oome down.” 'Grail came indoors, and the men, who had not spoken before since “Grail joined the clubmen,” talked together as of old. “He’s been gone since day before yistord’y mornin’/’ Grail said. “W© hunted all day yisterd’y >” “When ’d you come out?” Creeden asked. “Las’ night.” “In the night?” A nod of the head was the answer. “I wouldn’t ’a’ done it for forty clubmen !” “They’s good fellers,” Grail protested. “They spent lots of monpy on the park.” “Yes—spent it to rob tho people of the game.” So they talked, while Creeden built < a fire. Mrs Creeden soon came down, and Creeden’s oldest boy went to get the Lindseys the Wheelers, and the men in the log camp. Grail ate hungrily of tho breakfast that was put before him. He was apparently tired out, but when the manhunters were ready to go to Little Mink Valley an hour after daybreak, he came with them “to lead tho way to the camp” lest the hunters miss it. At eleven o’clock the worried sportsmen in the tent heard tho coming of a score of woodsmen, who shouted as they cam© down the trail with Grail in the lead and Creeden pacing after, pack and blanket on bis back. As they ate their dinner Creeden laid the plans for the hunt. “Seems just like he knowed all about it,” one .woodsman remarked admiring ly; and the sportsmen, five in number, were not a little awed by the masterful way in which Creeden, having “learned” where the lost man was last seen, arranged to scour the country for miles aroundWhen one o’clock came, tho start was made for Muskrat Mountain, a mile distant, at which place the man had disappeared. In three-quarters of an hour Grail pointed out the place, and the course the hunter had taken. Then Creeden told off the parties of four each. ‘-‘Spread out!” he said. “I’ll take the right hand end, with my boy and Grail and Luke Wilmurt. Scour that' mountain —maybe he’s hurted hiss-elf!” The “alalou” shouts of the men rang through the forest, and the sportsmen took new heart as they mingled with the woodsmen, trotting here and there at their heels, one o-f them venturing to tag the grim Creeden himself. And Creeden passed down the side hill to the swamp valley, and up the brook, studying the soft places. He pointed out a man’s footprint in the mud, and Grail said no one had hunted there before. So they took the direction of the footprint, and soon came up on tho point of Little Mink Mountain and half-way up Creeden stopped and hailed Grail, who was only a few yards to his left. “Here’s a man’s trades,” he said. Sure enough, on a rotten log were footmarks. “That’s him!” Grail said- “He alius walks logs.” The track led down a wide hardwood fiat, and Creeden looked acioss that flat with grim amusement in his heart. “Wed better call in the others,” he said. “We’ve got the cuss’ direction now.” Two shots, twice repeated, were fired, and after a time the searchers were gathered on the point of the mountain, around the foot-marked leg. Grail knew the footprints—a heel-brace showed it to he the lost man’s beyond question. Creeden spread his men out m a line, and himself took the centre. With a sureness that astounded even the woodsmen, who knew what Creeden could do in the woods, the trail was picked up rod by rod, down to the outlet of Antler Lake. Here, m the damp ground and on the hob-ivriled rocks, the searchers again saw the,missing man’s trail “with their own eyes.” Creeden had. followed the trees in line, and so rapidly picked up the footprints.

Beyond the outlet the veteran woodsman again picked up the trail, and as the afternoon waned lie carried it up to the face of the mountain. Almost at the foot of the precipice which had stopped the lost man on his first night c.ut the trail vanished in the gathering a Lades of night. Creeden called the men together. “Wo ; d better go back to AntlerLake,” Croeden said. “There’s an old camp’ there—it’s only a mile.” ,So they scrambled wearily down tho mountainside to the lake. The sports-

men were amazed and greatly pleased when some of the woodsmen drew great chunks of fresh venison from their blouses.

“Why--who killed it? How did it happen?” one asked. “He drapped off a mountain an’ broke his neck,” was the answer. “We wouldn't dasn’t to shoot no club deer.”

The sportsmen flushed under the taunting, grinning gaze of the woodsmen, hut gnawed int-o the meat with gusto when it had been fried in the vusty camp -frying-pan. Soon, after daybreak the men were again on their way to the rocky place where the lost man’s tracks were last seen.

They found the torn moss on the cliff faoe. and on© discovered the matted bed with match-sticks in it, where tho man passed the night. Serapeu lichens showed the trail to the crest, and on top Grail found footprints pointing over the brink across the wide hardwood slope to the swamp. At tho swamp, word was passed along the mile frontage to “watch for tracks mighty close now.” Creeden still held to the centre of the line, and picked up the trail. On the edge of the hardwood beyond, he stopped the line by a shot. Heretofore he had been sure of his course, exciting the admiration of even the men who knew his skill. After a little talk he ordered tho line to move up the slopo and to examine every log for the teLl-tale scrape of tired toes and heels in the moss. It was up and up blindly for nearly half a mile, and the face of another mountain rose almost sheer beyond the searchers. Grail looked at it with exclamations of dismay. A few 7 minutes later there was a yell eightyrods to the left : “Rere’s a fresh-blazed tree!”

“Stand back, then; don’t track the ground all up!” Creeden shouted back, and the line came to a halt, while he went to examine the trail.

They found the'empty shells of the cartridges which the man had fired .in impotent effort to get an answer. Then the steps were traced along the mountainside by means of the blazed treesCreeden, watching tho course taken, saw that it was beginning to boar more and more to tho loft-. At last, when the blaze-marks ceased, the leaves plowed up by the long jumps of a soared man running wore found leading straight to a swamp. On tho edge of the swamp the searchers were called together for a new talk. Then tho three best trailers went into tho dark shades and found not one trail but half a dozen. “He’s circled in hero,” Grail said.

“It looks that way,” Creeden answered. “He can’t he fur, but he don’t answer —hurt or scared, maybe. We’ll call in the hoys, an’ search every square rod of this place—it ain’t big, I reckon, by the lay of the hills.” So the men crossed tho swamp, sideby side two rods apart, until they came to the little pond around and around which the lost man had -wandered. His tracks were seen frequently in the moss but they were mingled and crossed so that no one could trace them out. Creeden carried the line clear across the swamp and then back again beyond the ends of the first search. A mile square was literally searched rod by rod, and then one sportsman, tired out, gave way and sat down, resting his face on his knees.

“I can't go another step!” he groaned, hut Creeden smiled with thin lips“l guess you can go a little further—we ain't goin’ to hunt for no two men !”

With which remark he pulled up a spruce sapling, and cut off tho long pliable main-root stem. He scraped off tho rootlets in the crotch of hia left

thumb, and then said to the tired man: “Now, you get up an’ come on 1” The answer was a shako of the head, without a glance up, so he didn’t see what was coming. Three or four woodsmen, .near enough to see, held their breath as Creeden raised the gad and brought it down on the man’s hack with all his might. “Off-wow!” the tired man yelped. The “swamp whip” was raised for another blow, hut the sportsman staggered to his feet, and neither he nor his fellow sportsmen complained of again being tired. “He ain’t in the swamp!” Creeden said to Grail, “we’ll have to circle around it now—no telling where he went out! I’ll take the outside end of tho line, an’ we’ll go clear around on tho hardwood. Get them sports together an’ set ’em on that log there till we come back!” Then the tedious task of circling the swamp began, but they had only gone a few roils when Creeden found a mantrack in a s.<k:-hril mud spring, going up. Mud drops were scattered on the leaves above tho spring, and the form soil could he seen by practised eyes for ten rods. ‘‘Wiio —e —e!” shouted Creeden. calling the men together again. “Bring them sports!” “He went up this way,” Creeden told the men. “i±o was scared an’ ru linin' —ho won tgo fur at that rate. It’s likely the foods hidin’ from us —watch out!” They spread along tho face of the gontle s'ope. Creeden and Grail in the centre of the line holding t-lio trail. They led straight up the slope, and there were places where the man had

I'allon headlong over the logs. At one of these hvas his rifle, the sight broken oh, and tho lever down, already beginrpi'-; to rust.

"He was runnin’ at night !” Creeden l;> a Grail at this discovery. “Probably he* busted his damned neck!” Jut the tracks continued unbroken t „. hue top of tho ridge, where they disappeared in some vitchhoppies. While v reoden slowed down, the lino gov a little ahead. Suddenly there was a snout: ; ‘There IkT is! There ho goes! On tell h.m! Catch him!” The line of men jumped forward, c osing in. Creeden looked beyond and saw the little precipice, with men jumping here and there along it. A few steps forward, and lie saw, far down the steep hillside, a man on his hands’ and knees, plunging down the eratio with woodsmen in wild, yelling pursuit. Creeden stood watching them, with his carbine in the crook of his left arm. Grail soon called: "His leg’s broke —don/’t le>t him Crush it so!” Hearing tlie shouts of the chase, the other woodsmen came running and whooping through the woods. Two of tho sportsmen sat down and cried, and ono of the others—the whipped one —• ran down the hill, holding up a silverid igreed flask, the contents of which he had saved intact for his lost oomrado. ‘■’He’s plumb looney!” Creeden heard so mo one say. “What’ll we do with him?” And then—“ He’s fainted!” t“Make a stretcher!” Creeden shouted as ho wont slowly down the hill to where the wreck of a man lay on the ground. “Gawd!” exclaimed Creeden at sight of the oo n tort of- body and bulging eyes, “Gawd! Jio is human, ain’t he!”