Fox, Wade’s favorite dog, much to his disgust, was left behind with Lewis.  The bloodhound, Kane, accompanied Wade.  Kane had been ill-treated and then beaten by Jack Belllounds, and he had left White Slides to take up his home at Moore’s cabin.  And at last he had seemed to reconcile himself to the hunter, not with love, but without distrust.  Kane never forgave; but he recognized his friend and master.  Wade carried his rifle and a buckskin pouch containing meat and bread.  His belt, heavily studded with shells, contained two guns, both now worn in plain sight, with the one on the right side hanging low.  Wade’s character seemed to have undergone some remarkable change, yet what he represented then was not unfamiliar.

He headed for the concealed cabin on the edge of the high valley, under the black brow of Gore Peak.  It was early morning of a July day, with summer fresh and new to the forest.  Along the park edges the birds and squirrels were holding carnival.  The grass was crisp and bediamonded with sparkling frost.  Tracks of game showed sharp in the white patches.  Wade paused once, listening.  Ah!  That most beautiful of forest melodies for him—­the bugle of an elk.  Clear, resonant, penetrating, with these qualities held and blended by a note of wildness, it rang thrillingly through all Wade’s being.  The hound listened, but was not interested.  He kept close beside the hunter or at his heels, a stealthily stepping, warily glancing hound, not scenting the four-footed denizens of the forest.  He expected his master to put him on the trail of men.

The distance from the Park to Gore Peak, as a crow would have flown, was not great.  But Wade progressed slowly; he kept to the dense parts of the forest; he avoided the open aisles, the swales, the glades, the high ridges, the rocky ground.  When he came to the Elgeria trail he was not disappointed to find it smooth, untrodden by any recent travel.  Half a mile farther on through the forest, however, he encountered tracks of three horses, made early the day before.  Still farther on he found cattle and horse tracks, now growing old and dim.  These tracks, pointed toward Elgeria, were like words of a printed page to Wade.

About noon he climbed a rocky eminence that jutted out from a slow-descending ridge, and from this vantage-point he saw down the wavering black and green bosom of the mountain slope.  A narrow valley, almost hidden, gleamed yellow in the sunlight.  At the edge of this valley a faint column of blue smoke curled upward.

“Ahuh!” muttered the hunter, as he looked.  The hound whined and pushed a cool nose into Wade’s hand.