By and by I reached the stream, the course of which made an open space a few yards wide in the trees.  The sight of its cool foaming current made me reckless.  I dipped my face in it, drank deep of it, and let it flow over my burning legs.  Then I scrambled up the other bank, and entered my enemy’s half of the wood.  He had missed a fine chance, I thought, in not killing me by the water’s edge; and this escape, and the momentary refreshment of the stream, heartened me enough to carry me some way into his territory.

The wood was thinner here, and the ground less cumbered.  I moved from tree to tree, crawling in the open bits, and scanning each circle of green dusk before I moved.  A red-bird fluttered on my right, and I lay long watching its flight.  Something moved ahead of me, but ’twas only a squirrel.

Then came a mocking laugh behind me.  I turned sharply, but saw nothing.  Far up in the branches there sounded the slow flap of an owl’s flight.  Many noises succeeded, and suddenly came one which froze my blood—­the harsh scream of a hawk.  My enemy was playing with me, and calling the wild things to mock me.

I went on a little, and then turned up the hill to where a clump of pines made a darker patch in the woodland.  All was quiet again, and my eyes searched the dusk for the sign of human life.  Then suddenly I saw something which stiffened me against a trunk.

Forty paces off in the dusk a face was looking from behind a tree.  It was to the west of me, and was looking downhill towards a patch of undergrowth.  I noted the long feather, the black forelock, the red skin of the forehead.

At the sight for the first time the zest of the pursuit filled me, and I forgot my pain.  Had I outwitted my wily foe, and by some miracle stolen a march on him?  I dared not believe it; but yet, as I rubbed my eyes, I could not doubt it.  I had got my chance, and had taken him unawares.  The face still peered intently downhill.  I lifted a pistol, took careful aim, and fired at the patch of red skin.

A thousand echoes rang through the wood.  The bullet had grazed the tree trunk, and the face was gone.  But whither?  Did a dead man lie behind the trunk, or had a wounded man crawled into cover?

I waited breathlessly for a minute or two, and then went forward, with my second pistol at the cock.

There was nothing behind the tree.  Only a piece of red bark with a bullet hole through it, some greasy horsehair, and a feather.  And then from many quarters seemed to come a wicked laughter, I leaned against the trunk, with a deadly nausea clutching at my heart.  Poor fool, I had rejoiced for a second, only to be dashed into utter despair!

I do not think I had ever had much hope, but now I was convinced that all was over.  The water had made my burns worse, and disappointment had sapped the little remnants of my strength.  My one desire was to get out of this ghoulish thicket and die by the stream-side.  The cool sound of it would be a fitting dirge for a foolish fellow who had wandered far from his home.