Dan answered him with startling emphasis. But the look that he wore said more than his words.
They trudged on, and Lennox grew thoughtful. He was recalling the picture that he had seen when he had whirled to look at Dan, immediately after the deer had leaped from its bed. It puzzled him a little. He had turned to find the younger man in a perfect posture to shoot, his feet placed in exactly the position that years of experience had taught Lennox was correct; and withal, absolutely motionless. Of all the many things to learn in the wilderness, to stand perfectly still in the presence of game is one of the hardest. The natural impulse is to start,—a nervous reflex that usually terrifies the game. The principle of standing still is, of course, that it takes a certain length of time for the deer to look about after it makes its first leap from its bed, and if the hunter is motionless, the deer is usually unable to identify him as a thing to fear. It gives a better chance for a shot. What many hunters take years to learn, Dan had seemed to know by instinct. Could it be, after all, that this slender weakling, even now bowed down with a terrible malady, had inherited the true frontiersman's instincts of his ancestors?
Then all at once Lennox halted in his tracks, evidently with no other purpose than to study the tall form that now was walking up the trail in front of him. And he uttered a little exclamation of amazement.
"Listen, Dan!" he cried suddenly. "Haven't you ever been in the woods before?"
Dan turned, smiling. "No. What have I done now?"
"What have you done! You're doing something that I never saw a tenderfoot do in my life, before. I've known men to hunt for years—literally years—and not know how to do it. And that is—to place your feet."
"Place my feet? I'm afraid I don't understand."
"I mean—to walk silently. To stalk, damn it, Dan! This brush is dry. It's dry as tinder. A cougar can get over it like so much smoke, and a man who's lived all his life in the hills can usually climb a ridge and not make any more noise than a young avalanche. Just now I had a feeling that I wasn't hearing you walk, and I thought my ears must be going back on me. I stopped to see. You were doing it, Dan. You were stalking—putting down your feet like a cat. It's the hardest thing to learn there is, and you're doing it the first half-hour."
Dan laughed, delighted more than he cared to show. "Well, what of it?" he asked.
"What of it? That's it—what of it. And what caused it, and all about it. Go on and let me think."