THE FOREST FEUD

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 6, 10 February 1906, Page 12

THE FOREST FEUD

By

Raymond L. Spears

HOW A POACHER, SMARTING UNDER THE WHIP OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY, TOOK HIS REVENGE.

CHAPTER I. IN FEAB OF ARBEST. a TALL, lithe man came down the little Mink Valley wearing his elm-splint pack-basket like a saddle on his back. In his right hand he carried a tiny rille, 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 the witchhoppies and over the spruce points without regard to deercover. When he came in sight of the blazed trail in 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 which explained his caution. One read: PRIVATE PARK! Hunting, Fishing, or Camping On These Grounds is Prohibited. HUNTERS’ CLUB. More than eighty thousand acres of forest land, dotted over 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 the exclusive use of its members, who shot deer, 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 friends had gone to gaol to “live out” a twenty-five dollar fine for trespass. “J wish I knowed where that plaguy Grail's party is!” the poacher said to himself. “They got a tent, and are liable to lay down this brook anywhere.” 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 slant of a beech-flat at the edge of the 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 come out to save lugging. Their camp’s below’ here somewhere.” Having made this discovery, he started diagonally back up the other side of the valley, and soon found himself beside a thread of water flowing down to the Little Mink. “I’ll camp on this somewhere,” the man said to himself. “I want a good, tigiit place—those cusses are likely to hunt up this way.” Down the streamlet was open hardwood, 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 his supper, and smoked his pipe, he rolled up in his blanket. His last thoughts were of an owl that squawked in a near-by tree. “Who-ake—Who-nke!” exclaimed the owl. “Cm Cal Creeden!” answered the man. for. like all’ woodsmen, he felt obliged to answer the questions put by birds. The fire burned for hours, snapping and sissing. Then the beds of coals glowed red and redder, until they were crimson overlaid with gray. The man slept until toward morning, when the yold routed him out. At dawn, after his breakfast of bread and broiled salt pork, lie stepp'd away into the wood". climbing Little Mink Mountain as he worked toward Beavor Lake—a meat-hunter. Slowly and with infinite caution he followed the great valley side, eager to catch sight of th? rounded rump, the pointel noise, ot the flash of a deer, in alarmetf flight. Ho eased away into the bottom undulations, -where he found Ciesh sign. -

“I’ll get one here!” he whispered exultantly, forgetting his man-fears. He crept along with unrivalled skill for a time, and then, a hundred yards away on the side of a knoll, something quivered—a gray patch of motion. It was a deer coming dow n the grade diagonally toward him, perhaps to drink in the bit of brook in the hollow. The 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 out just over the knoll, not thirty rods away. Instantly on all sides deer seemed to spring from the earth. One rushed past Creeden from a patch of witehhopple scarcely thirty yards away; two came straight toward him, and to his right he caught flashes of white flags as the deer ranFor a moment he stood startled and dismayed. “Them’s the clubmen!” he exclaimed under his breath, and then, stooping low, he scudded away up the bottoms, hearing the 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 eried, and the answer came clear to Creeden: “Gee, seventeen ways at once!” Although he gritted his teeth angrily because he had not dared shoot for fear of arrest, Creeden couldn’t help grinning at that. In a few minutes he was far rip 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, from which he could easily have taken one and probably two or three, kept him angry and careless. "Anywhere else, an’ I could of killed four or five of them right thar! ” he said to himself. "Best ehanet I ever had—but they’d a took me to jail for interfering with their sport! What a cur Grail is! They won’t let him carry a gun. the damned paekhorse!” Twice h,? saw deer-flags, but his caret less tread and careless glance cost him the good shots he might have had. M hen he crossed The Burning on his way to camp late in the day, fading like a dog in a pantry, he despoiled the deer saddles of tire.Jong tenderloins hanging there. “What’d the boys say to see me stealin’ tension!” he exclaimed bitterly. "Damn the men that brought me to it!” He got the wood for his night-fire, and with no pleasant thought, passed the evening smoking moodily. “I'll get one to-morrow !” he declared as he bunked’ down for the night. CHAPTER 11. “THREE TREES IN A LINE.” The morrow found further degradation for the South Side’s most skilful still-hunter. He started early, ami having found where tire deer “used.” made haste into the bottoms along the cutlet of Beaver Lake, where the herd of deer had been. lie mused glumly over the old tracks of galloping game. Out of curiosjty 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 slwwed where one had stood emptying his- Winchester, the bright shells' catching the sunlight as they lay in the leaves.

The scuffled ground showed how the hunter had rushed right over a deer’s tracks without a pause. Creeden 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. Creeden was aliout to pass on, when a new thought eame. “It ain’t right to waste it,” he 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 to him, a proud still-hunter of skill, to take a dead deer found in the wilderness. "I’d a found that deer for them yesterday if they’d been decent,” he muttered over the careass. “They los’ a nice buck, an’ me? Some day I’ll fix them cusses for this.” As Creeden jerked the venison on the following 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. The meat prepared, he went hunting in the storm, feeling that luck would be with him. • Sure enough, on a sprucegrown point up the valley, a buck with seventeen-ineh antlers shook the rain from its back and reared its head. The noir,?, the motion and the up-coming antlers directed Creeden’s gaze aright, and as the long head came up, the carbine sights were drawn truly. A single shot rang out, and the deer fell floundering to the leaves, dead. “Thar, damn you!” Creeden said as, having dressed out the saddles and head, h? struck out, heavy laden, for the spot where he had spent the night. Almost noiselessly he came down to the huge rock that towered above his eamp, and dropped the burden of meat to the pile of firewood with a crash. "Yep!” a startled voice exclaimed under the lean-to, and a whiskered man appearedCreeden stepped back in dismay, for it was the president of the Hunters’ Club, one of Grail’s party. "Well, sir!” the visitor said wi h a grin. “I eaught von this time, didn’t' I?” Creeden watched the man in silence. The sportsman did not realize it, but Creeden was contemplating murder, for lie had been taught to believe that discovery by a club man or club watcher on club grounds meant “lawing” at least, and probably jail. Creeden knew that the club watchers ha dspecial orders to catch him if possible, and here the president of the club had found him in his camp. The woodsman’s eyes wandered from stump to stump of the yellow birch trees which he had cut down, and mentally reckoned them up at twenty-

five dollars per tree, the club price for such “vandalism.” “I’ve been out ever since daybreak,* the clubman babbled on in sheer delight at having some one to talk to. “1 got separated from the others early in the day somehow. I found some traces of deer, so I tried to follow their footsteps, but they were so intricately associated that I soon lost sight of them. I saw a strange little animal onee, • black little fellow. I never saw one like it before. A fox, I presume, or a weanel “Fisher, most likely!” Creeden remarked. “You’re a clubman, ain’t you ?” “Why, yes. Are you?” with a meaning smile. Creeden shook his head. “No-o!” the other said with moek surprise. ‘“What are you hunting on club grounds for, then?” This was said with teazing playful? ness, but Creeden had never associated with clubmen, and did not understand that it was said in fun. The club president was good-humoured, ami while ho awaited Creeden’s answer cut a siren from a strip of jerk over his head. “I ain’t on club grounds,” Creedew 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 earnp?” interrupted Creeden. “Why, it’s on the 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 own watch. “I’m two-thirty,” lie said. “I guess I be a little slew,” Creeden rejoined, setting his wateh. “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. hy—why —I must be terribly lost!” “I guess you be,” was the simple response. “Well—Jermy man, won’t you show me the way out? I —l left my compass in camp this morning, and the day’s so dark I can’t tell where the sun is.” “I can show ye,” Creeden said., "but I'll tell ve now. I think you elub fellers is pretty damned fresh, asking a man if he’s a club member when he’s hunting on State land.” ’ “I—l beg your pardon,” the visitor saill, 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.” With 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: “You’Ve 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. . “Weil, you come around the head of Antler Lake then. Now you’ve got to cross the outlet—it’s a big stream. Then go through another thick swamp and you take the first brook beyond the ridge, and follow it down. You may come into Little Mink, or you may come into Bear River, depending on the stream you hit. Then you can toiler down or up to eamp—dow : n if it s'the river, and up if it’s the brook.” “All right,” was the answer, grateful enough. Then, in the 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—toiler 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 the hardening of the wrinkles at the corners of Creeden’s eyes. “I’m very much obliged to you.” “.lust keep going straight,” Creeden said. “It’s a long ways. You can go straight, I suppose?” lie added, with a sudden thought. “I don’t knew—l’m not extra skilful.” “Well, all you got to 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. Y'ou just keep picking up trees ahead of you that way. and when you get down to two trees, pick up another beyond. TliatTl keep you straight away, and you can’t miss it.” “That’s a good idea! Thank you!” was the response. “Can’t I reward you ?” “Nope,” Creeden said shortly. “Goodbye ! ” CHAPTER 111. LOST ! Creeden watched the clubman as he picked his way along, and saw him stop at intervals to be sure he got a third tree in line with the others he 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 tliar. alt right!” Creeden Said to himself. “He’s goin’ right straight to hell, I reckon! Buck River? Whoop! He’ll hit Lake Champlain 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 tiie wilderness,] and straight away from the camp he sought. 'liie wind whispered through the tree tcps. and after every whisper a shower of heavy drops fell. The gusts grew cold as night came on, and instead of mere rain on the evergreens, the whish of sieet sounded. Creeden, grinning in his comfort, exclaimed: •He’ll run around a tree Io keep warm to-night. Gosh! What a night to lay out!” Creeden thought joyously. “I kitowed ’twould come sonu time—and the club’s president! Whoop!” Then, at nightfall, he remembered, with a little start: “I’ll have to go out to-morrow —I’ve got all the meat I can carry.” Then he skinned out the deer saddles, cutting off the great muscles by firelight. Having packed his basket full, he “hefted ’ it. The weight was great, and he groaned cheerfully al the ti-ought of the trail, and the venison gravys, flies, pot-pies and stews there were - in that ma<j of green and jerked meat. 75 In the uorning he tooic down the lean-tc. arc’ hid it with the axe and pail 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 th.-?e diets m quick succession, followed a few minutes later by three more shots. • I guess there’s a man lost somewhere!’’ Creeden said to himself. ‘I ll just encourage the searchers a little.” With 11. at he fired his carbine fire times jerkily, as unpractised sportsmen do. A fu.-iiiade was the reply. “There!” Creeden said between his clenched teeth. “They won’t find him to-day. Let the cuss sweat it out. lie ain’t human: he ain’t even white, the dog-faced land-grabber. He an.l his friends Lave stole my hun' iug-eountry, they sit on it and bark when a man comes along. Now let him whine!" Then, satisfied in having rendered futile that uay’s hunt for the missing clubman, he went up the Little Mink Valley, crossed the divide, and, before night, had his green venison in a brine and the jerk in the garret of his o\yn 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 silence, while the others talked of hunting and told of what they would do with dynamite and strychnine if the club’s didn’t let up driving hunters from the deer country The lost 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 fiat. In due time lie eame to the “large stream,” the “outlet 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 Lis night, 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 could, every step taking him further from camp and further from the trails and Toads. In the dusk of late afternoon he paseed 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 eame slowly into the forest, the man. growing worried, hastened his footsteps. It seemed to him that the ridge he was climbing was frightfully long, out he comforted himself with the thought that on thi; 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. The harwood changed to a growth of giant hemlocks and shapely spruc%

whose top branches were lost to sight in a gray raiu-cloml. Then night fell, leaving him face to faee with a steep cliff, from which he 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 “little brook leading home.” Then the mist that had been falling changed to a cold, clotted rain. He had become warm with his elimb, and when he stopped, to think, the sleety wind chilled him through. Not being a coward, lie sought shelter, and found a place under an overhang where there were a few. dry leaves. There he tried in vain to start a fire with rotten wood and wet moss. At 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. “I’ll 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 round in half-hour jerks, or q'tirter-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 come. He flung his arms violently and batted his fists against stone, skinning the knuckles when he did so. He tried to step clear of the rocks for freer motion, and stumbled and rolled on the face of a mountain. He clutched frantically into the night and caught a capling, by which he pulled himself back up to the shelter of the reek, and sat down again, thoroughly scared by his fall; for he had not realised that he might be above a precipice as well as under one, having travelled after 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 iagged rocks pointing upward. He shuddered at the thought of what, might have happened to him had he fallen on them. “I'll soon get oyer this ridge,” he said to himself more than half aloud, “and maylie I won’t put down breakfast! Wonder what, the boys’ll say?” He climbed the mountainside and soon came to tho back. He found it

a long ridge, with the far side a gentle slope instead of a rocky steep like that which he had elimbed. The good walking in prospect pleased him, and he hurried ahead, seeking for tlve stream the woodsman told him he -would find there. At the foot of the hardwood slope he came to a balsam swamp—a thick, half-dead growth of pole sapliugs. 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 near; but 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 If” he exclaimed. Then, looking at bis wateh, 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 his rifle to his shoulder and emptied the bullets into the air with frantic haste. Then he listened for an answer from his companions, who were just then 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 .«> 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 limits weakening with hunger and fear. At last, 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 be had been walking for hours without knowing if. The third morning found him lying, gunless, hatless, and with a broken leg, at the foot of a little ledge of rock over which he had fallen in a mad night rush through tlie 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 afternooa, and that is the west! Oh, mv leg—inv leg!”

CHAPTER IV. COALS OF FIRE. Night brought to an end a day of fruitless search for the missing president of the Hunter’s Club, and Grail, the guide, was told he ought to go out after help. So Grail, with the lantern, started Op the Little Mink Brook trail to get woodsmen to help find the missing man. Jt was nearly daybreak when he came down the Reservoir road to Cal Creeden’s house, and pounded on the door. •‘llello, there!’’ Creeden shouted from upstairs. “Hello!” was the reply. “This is Grail. One of them club fellers is lost. They want me to get men to help find him. Won’t you eoine?” “They can g-. to hell—-them club fellers can!” “The wages is good, Cal. Five dollars a day for you, they said. You eould find him, knowing the country so well. Won’t you come’” - “I don't want any of their damned money—sech fellers as you ean take it!” “Good God, Cal! You ain’t goin’ to leave him in the woods to die, be you "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 people’s” deer was in Creeden’s heart, but Grail made another appeal: . “But he’s a man, Cal—he’s a man! You won’t let a man die without helping him when you ean, will you’” Silence followed this appeal for a few moments, and then Creeden said, gruffly: “Well, wait a minute, an’ I’ll come down.” Grail came indoors, and the men, who had not spoken before since “Grail joined the clubmen,” talked together a« of old. “He’s been gone since day before yisterd’y mornin’,” Grail said. “We hunted all day yisterd’y—•— ■” “When ’<l 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 money on the park.” . “Yes—spent it to rob the people of the game.” So they talked, while Creeden built faee. 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 the breakfast that was put before him. He was apparently tired out. but when the manhunters were ready to go to Little Mink A’alley an hour after daybreak, he came •with them “to lead the way to the camp” lest the hunters miss it. At eleven o’clock the worried sportsmen in the tent heard the coining of a score of woodsmen, who shouted as they came down the trail with Grail in the lead and Creeden pacing after, pack and blanket on his back. As they ate their dinner Creeden laid the plans for the hunt. "Seems just like he knowed all about it,” one wouilshian remarked admiringly ; and the sportsmen, five in number, were not a little awed by the masterjful way in which Creeden. having “learned” where the lost man was last seen, arranged to scour the country for miles around. When one o’clock came the 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 Tight-hand end, with my boy and Grail and Luke Wilmurt. Scour that mountain—maybe he’s hurted hisself!” 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 of 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 the point of Little Mink Mountain, and half-way up Creeden stopped and hailed Grail, who was only a few yards to the left. “Here’s a man’s tracks,” 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 flat, and Creeden looked across that flat with grim amusement in his heart. “We’d 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 a mountain, around the foot-marked log. Grail knew the footprints —a heel-brace showed it to be the lost man’s beyond question. Creeden spread his men out in a line, and himself took the centre. With a sureness that astounded even the woodsmen, who knew what Creedon could do in the woods, the trail was picked up rod bv rod, down to the outlet of Antler Lake. Here, in the damp ground and on the hob-nailed 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 he carried it up to the face of the mountain. Almost at the foot of the precipice which had stopped rhe lost man on his first night out the trail vanished in the gathering shades of night. Creeden called the men together. “We’d better go back to Antler Lake,” Creeden said. "There’s an old camp there —it’s only a mile.” So they scrambled wearily down the mountainside! to the lake. ' The sportsmen 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, but gnawed into the meat with gusto when it had been friend in the rusty eamp frying-pan. Soon after daybreak the men were aagin on their way to the rocky place where the lost man’s tracks were last seen. They found the torn moss on the cliff face, and one discovered the matted lied with match-sticks in it, where the man passed the night. Scraped 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 the 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 liad been sure of his course, exciting the admiration of even the men who knew his skill. After a little talk, he ordered the line to move up the slope and to examine every log for the tell-tale spyape of tired toes and heels in the mote. It was up and up mindly for nearly half a mile, and the face of another mountain rose almost sheer liefore the searchers. Grail looked at it with exclamations of dismay. A few minutes later there was a yell eighty rods to the left: “Here’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 trees. Creeden, watching the course taken.

saw that it was beginning to bear more and more to the left. At last, when the blaze-marks ceased, the leaves ploughed up by the long jumps of a scared man running were found leading straight to a swamp. On the edge of the swamp the searchers were called together for a new talk. Then the three best trailers went into the dark shades and found not one trail, but half a dozen. “He’s circled in here,” Grail said. “It looks that way,” Creeden answered. “He can’t be fur, but he don’t answer •—hurt or scared, maybe. “We’ll call in the boys, an’ search every square rod of this place—it ain’t big, I reckon, by the lay of the hills.” So the men crossed the swamp, side-by-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 eould 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, but Creeden smiled with thin lips. “I 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 the long, pliable main-root stem. lie scraped off the rootlets in the crotch of his left thumb, and then said to the tired man: “Now, you get up an’ come on!” The answer was a shake 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 back with all his might. “Ow-wow!” the tired man yelped. The “swamp whip” was raised for another blow, but 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 the line, an’ we’ll go clear around on the 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 rods when Creeden found a mantrack in a side-hill mud spring, going up. Mud drops were scattered on the leaves above the spring, and the torn soil eould be seen by practised eyes for ten rods. “Who —e —e!” shouted Creeden, calling the men together again. “Bring them sports! ” “He went up this way,” Creeden told the men. "lie was scared an’ runnin’— he won’t go fur at that rate. It’s likely the fool’s hidin’ from us—watch out!” They spread along the face of the gentle slope. Creeden and Grail in the centre of the line holding the trail. They led straight up the slope, and there were places where the man had fallen headlong over the logs. At one of these was his rifle, the sight broken off, and the lever down, already beginning to rust. “He was runnin’ at night!” Creeden told Grail at this discovery. ’ Probably he’s busted his damned neck!” But the track continued unbroken to the top of the ridge, whore they disappeared in some witchhoppies. While Creeden slowed down, the line got a little ahead. Suddenly there was a shout: “There lie is! There he goes! Catch him! Catch him!” The line of men jumped forward, closing in. Creeden looked beyond and saw

the little precipice, with men jumping over here and there along it. A few steps forward, and he saw, far down the steep hillside, a man on his hands and knees, plunging down the grade with woodsmen in wild, yelling pursuit. Creedon stood watching them, with his carbine in the crook of his left arm. Grail soon called: “His leg’s broke—don’t let him thrash it so!” Hearing the shouts of the chase, the other woodsmen came running and whooping through the woods. Two of the sportsmen sat down and cried, and one of the others—the whipped one—ran down the hill, holding up a silverfiligreed flask, the contents of which he had saved intact for his lost comrade. "He’s plumb looney!” Creeden heard some one say. “What’ll we do with him?” And then—“He'S fainted!” “Make a stretcher!” Creeden shouted as he went slowly down the hill to where the wreck of a man lay on the ground. “Gawd!” exclaimed Creeden at sight of the contorted body and bulging eyes, “Gawd! He is human, ain’t.he!”