right, Jan, boy. Stay there."

When Captain Arnutt dismounted he found his subordinate standing beside
a handcuffed man, who sat on the ground, glaring hopelessly at the hound
responsible for his capture. Jan's tongue hung out from one side of his
parted jaws, and his face expressed satisfaction and good humor. He had
done his job and done it well. The thought of injuring his quarry had
never occurred to him, as Dick Vaughan very well knew, despite his
warning remark to the Italian. But although Jan had had no thought of
attacking the recumbent man he had trailed, he was very fully conscious
that this man was his quarry. The handcuffing episode had not been lost
upon him.

From the outset he had known that he and Dick were hunting that day. Why
they hunted man he had no idea. Personally, he had not so much pursued
an individual as he had hunted a certain smell. In coming upon the
sleeping Italian he had tracked down this particular smell. His
conception of his duty was, having tracked the smell to the man, to hand
the man over to Dick. That marked for him the end of his work; but not
by any means the end of his interest in the upshot of it.




XXIII

THE FIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE


Even without the confession he ultimately made, Jan's tracking, the