mop of scraggly face-bristles he critically surveyed both land and
air, and then, with the slight limp in his gait which would always
remain as a mark of Jed Hawkins' brutality, he trotted
deliberately in the direction of the whiskey-runner's cabin home.

A bitter memory of Jed Hawkins flattened his ears when he came
near the rock-cluttered coulee in which he had fought for Nada,
and had suffered his broken bones, and today--even as he obeyed
the instinctive caution to stop and listen--Jed Hawkins himself
came out of the mouth of the coulee, bearing a brown jug in one
hand and a thick cudgel in the other. His one wicked eye gleamed
in the waning sun. His lean and scraggly face was alight with a
sinister exultation as he paused for a moment close to the rock
behind which Peter was hidden, and Peter's fangs lay bare and his
body trembled while the man stood there. Then he moved on, and
Peter did not stir, but waited until the jug and the cudgel and
the man were out of sight.

Low under his breath he was snarling when he went on. Hatred, for
a moment, had flamed hot in his soul. Then he turned, and buried
himself in a clump of balsams that reached out into the plain, and
a few moments later came to the edge of a tiny meadow in the heart
of them, where a warbler was bursting its throat in evening-song.

Around the edge of the meadow Peter circled, his feet deep in
buttercups and red fire-flowers, and crushing softly ripe
strawberries that grew in scarlet profusion in the open, until he
came to a screen of young jackpines, and through these he quietly
and apologetically nosed his way. Then he stood wagging his tail,
with Nada sitting on the grass half a dozen steps from him, wiping