ROD'S FIGHT FOR LIFE

It was some time before Roderick moved from his concealment behind the
rock. It was not fear that held him there, but a knowledge within
him that he needed to think, to collect his senses as he would have
expressed it if Wabi had been with him. For a brief spell he was
stunned by the succession of surprises which he had encountered, and
he felt that now, if ever in his life, he needed control of himself.
He did not attempt to solve the mystery of the trail beyond the fact
that it was not made by a bear and that the handprint on the log
was not made by a man. But he was certain of one thing. In some way
Minnetaki was associated with both.

When he continued his pursuit he made his way with extreme caution. At
each new turn in the trail he fell behind some rock or clump of bushes
and scanned the gorge as far as he could see ahead of him. But each
moment these distances of observation became shorter. The ridge on his
left became almost a sheer wall; on his right a second ridge closed
in until the gorge had narrowed to a hundred feet in width, choked by
huge masses of rock thrown there in some mighty upheaval of past ages.
It was very soon apparent to Rod that the mysterious person whom he
was pursuing was perfectly at home in the lonely chasm. As straight as
a drawn whip-lash his trail led from one break in the rocky chaos to
another. Never did he err. Once the tracks seemed to end squarely
against a broad face of rock, but there the young hunter found a cleft
in the granite wall scarcely wider than his body, through which he
cautiously wormed his way. Where this cleft opened into the chasm
again the fugitive had rested for a few moments, and had placed some
burden upon the snow at his feet. A single glance disclosed what
this burden had been, for in the snow was that same clearly-defined