“And you suggest—that I take a trip after lions?”
“Lions are hard game, not for children,” was the reply. “ ’I hunted the lion,’ was one of the few things an old and tough Egyptian Pharaoh saw fit to record imperishably on his monument—but you’re not a Pharaoh yet. I’ve got something here.”
He fished through many waistcoat pockets and drew out a clipping, spreading it out on the broad arm of his chair. “I thought of you when I read it—and cut it out—and I thought what I would have done if it wasn’t for the old game leg. I thought maybe it would stir up your dormant imagination and set you off. Read it.”
Hugh read, noting first that the clipping was a reprint from an Idaho paper:
The stockmen of the Smoky Land section, up Silver Creek way, say that unless government hunters come to their aid, the stock business in that district will be seriously impaired. Wolves and coyotes seem extra plentiful this year, and besides a giant cougar, to whom the sparse settlers have given the name of Broken Fang, has been ranging there for some months, doing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to cattle and sheep. From the size of his track and the occasional glimpses of him, the residents of that section think that he is the largest of the great cats that has ranged in Idaho for many years.
The Old Colonel studied Hugh’s face as he read. “Not very interesting, eh?” he commented at last. “My boy—he would be a trophy. I know something about that hairy old breed of mountaineers in the Upper Salmon country. They don’t take the trouble to give a puma a name unless he’s a moose. I know quite a little about pumas, too—or cougars, they call ’em. Usually they are about as dangerous as white rabbits. But once in a while one of them gets overgrown and thinks he bosses the range. If wounded—and sometimes by a long chance even if he isn’t wounded—they put up a wicked fight. This big boy would be a trophy worth having; besides, you might pick up a grizzly or a smaller puma. There are always trout, and this is trout-time in the West. Why don’t you go after him?”
The Old Colonel always put his propositions in just that straight-out way; and it made them hard to refuse.
“You mean—go out there three thousand miles on a long chance of killing this cattle-slayer?”
“Why not? You’re not paralyzed or anything. You ought to see Idaho. Every man should. As I said, there are worlds of smaller game. Every man ought to have an objective in his trip; so I say go to Smoky Land. These two weeks might teach you to love the woods so you’d go again and again. And a few trips to the high ranges, once you really got to love ’em and play ’em right, might make—might do wonders for you. Please give me the pleasure of telling the boys that Hughey Gaylord has gone big-game hunting.”
Hugh felt the wave of red spreading in his cheeks again. He knew perfectly what the old man had been about to say—“to make a man of him.”
“Remember,” the Old Colonel urged further, “you’re an Anglo-Saxon—a white man of straight descent. It’s a heritage, Hugh. And it implies an obligation.”
“I’d hate it,” Hugh protested.
“Try it and see. Perhaps—there might be a miracle.”
Hugh drained his glass; then stood up. “Very well, I’ll start next week,” he said at last simply.
Thus this son of cities gave his promise to go forth into a man’s land: a land of trial and travail, of many perils and strong delights, a jagged mountain land where the powers of the wilderness still ruled supreme—and yet a place where miracles might come to pass.
III
The camp-robber, perched on a limb, was in considerable of a mental turmoil. His mentality was never of an extra high grade, and today his intellectual grasp had almost failed him. And the reason was that he had made an astonishing discovery; and these remote Idaho forests had suddenly revealed to him a form of life that he hadn’t had any idea existed.
Of course his true name wasn’t “camp-robber.” In reality he belonged to that noisy, thievish jay-magpie assemblage that is to be found in almost all of the great Western forests, and he had a long and jaw-breaking scientific designation besides. But on the lower East Side it isn’t necessary to hunt up the name in full of Tony the Dip, because the title describes him better than the name his mother gave him. It was much the same with the camp-robber. He got the title from his habits and it fitted him to perfection.
He was rather a gay old bird with considerable blue and gray in his feathers, and in his several months of life he had concluded that he knew these Idaho woods from one end to another. He thought it would be a long, cold summer day before he would meet a situation that he could not immediately handle. He knew just how to look twice into a cluster of leaves and twigs before he lighted among them—lest a certain little brown-furred cutthroat that was rather unpleasantly known to his family should be waiting in ambush. He knew how to select a nest-site out of the reach of a prowling raccoon, and he was as impertinent and saucy from all this knowledge as words can tell. Yet out of a perfectly clear ground, so to speak (it wouldn’t be correct to say out of a clear sky when referring to one who habitually lives in the sky) two utterly unknown and enormous living creatures had revealed themselves.
The camp-robber had been winging back and forth through the forest and had flitted down to the spring for a bath. One of the two figures was standing erect, shaking his fist at the speeding form of Spread Horn—a creature from the back
