“My wild man came this way,” was Sheldon’s eager thought. “He knew the trail over the mountain, and has gone on ahead. And that knife of his—”
He shuddered in spite of himself, and again cursed himself for getting what he called “nerves.” But he thought that it was a fair bet that same knife had been driven into the backs of at least two men.
He went back for his horse, walking swiftly. Three hours had slipped away since noon. But he told himself that he was not “burning daylight.” He had found a way over the mountain, a way he believed his horse could go with him. And if luck was good, he’d camp to-night in the valley down into which he had looked from the peak.
And somewhere, far ahead of him, perhaps not a thousand feet away, watching him from behind some tree or rock, was his “wild man!” He was beginning to be certain that it was a man, a little fellow, dwarfed in body and mind and soul, and yet—
And yet the track might have been that of a boy of ten, or of a woman. Right then he swore that he was going to find out whose track that was before he turned his back on the Sasnokee-keewan.
“I’d never be able to get it out of my head if I lived to be a thousand years old if I didn’t get a look at the thing,” he assured himself. “Thank God it’s early in the season.”
When he stopped to rest, he already had the habit of keeping his back to a tree.
CHAPTER IV. THE CHASE.
Again Sheldon traveled on until after nightfall and moonrise. Even the long twilight of these latitudes had faded when finally, following the monuments of an old, old trail, he came down into the valley which he had overlooked from the peak.
Horse and man were alike tired and hungry. They found a small stream, and in the first grove where there was sufficient grass, Sheldon made his camp for the night. And the fact that he was tired was not the only reason, not even the chief reason perhaps, that he did not build his customary camp-fire.