Tom of Okanagan grunted approval, and the three stood still, until the drumming of hoofs was lost in the silence of the bush.

“They’re gone,” said Seaforth.  “Do you mean to do nothing?”

“Yes,” said Alton.  “I am going to stop right where I am until there’s light enough to trail them by.  Do you know anything better, Tom?”

“No,” said the man from Okanagan.  “Still, I’m not quite as good at thinking just now as I would like to be.  The last time I felt like this was when Siwash Bob took the back of the axe to me.  I figure that was a panther.”

“Yes,” said Alton; “it was a panther.”

“Well,” said Okanagan, “did you ever hear of one that went for a horse close up with a tent before?”

“I have,” said Alton, “seen a panther that turned on a man who wanted to get a shot at it in the undergrowth.”

“Oh, yes,” said Okanagan.  “He’d got something he’d caught for dinner in the bushes, but it’s kind of curious that beasts come round and howl at us.  Anyway, we can’t find out nothing until the daylight comes.”

They crawled back into the tent, and it was characteristic of them that although the loss of the horses might traverse all their plans they went to sleep again, and awakened as the beasts do, instinctively, when the first light crept over the shoulder of the hill.  Ten minutes later Alton had the fire lighted, and sat down beside it with the frypan in his hand.  The recovery of the horses was a question of importance, but it might well entail a day’s journey, and he knew that to commence it without his breakfast would be distinctly unwise of him.  Accordingly he tranquilly held the pan, while as the mists melted and the awakening earth put on shape and form there was unrolled before him a wondrous transformation scene.

When he had last awakened the wilderness had lain formless, wrapped in blackness, primitive and pagan.  Now the great pines rising row and row from the hollow pointed heavenwards with all their sombre spires, and led the eye upwards ever over the rock that lost its greyness and glinted to the gleam of snow far up in the empyrean that was sundered from earth by the vapours and wholly spiritual.  Alton realized dimly a little of the motive of the scene, and felt that the world was good, for, laying down the frypan, he stood up stretching his arms above his head as he rejoiced in the strength of his vigorous manhood.  Still, like most of the bushmen, he did not express his feelings in speech.

“Charley, you’ll be slow for your wedding.  Turn out, the pork’s done,” he said.

They lost no time, but they did not eat in haste, and Alton glanced at Seaforth when the meal was done.  “You’ll stop right here, Charley, by the tent,” he said.  “I can’t quite tell when Tom and I will be back again.”