The black chasm which separated us from the trail of the wild hunter was not as formidable a barrier as the unfathomable abyss which separates the reader from what he thinks he would have done had he been in my place, and what really would have been his plan of action.

There were a lot of burning questions which I had privately made up in my mind to propound to the Wild Hunter, or the even wilder medicine bear, upon the occasion of our next meeting. But when the lad was standing before me, with bended bow and flashing eyes, the burning importance of those questions did not appeal to me as forcibly as did the urgent necessity of sheltering my body behind the friendly stone. To be truthful, it must be admitted that the proposed inquiries were, for the time, entirely forgotten, and I even breathed a sigh of relief when the boy suddenly clambered up the face of the cliff, turned, gave us a fierce look of defiance, made some quick energetic gestures with his hand and disappeared.

He scaled that precipitous rock with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by fingers or moccasin-covered toes.

Not until the Indian had disappeared down a dry coulee did I venture from the shelter of the protecting rock, or realize that my carefully planned interview must be indefinitely postponed.

With his arms folded across his chest, his blond hair sweeping his shoulders, his blue eyes fixed upon a rocky rib of the mountain behind which the boy had disappeared, Big Pete still stood like a statue. But gradually the statuesque pose resolved itself into a more commonplace posture, and the muscles of the face relaxed until the familiar twinkle hovered around the corners of his eyes. “What did he say when he made those motions, Pete?”

“Waugh! he said he was not afraid of any whitefaced coyote like us.” And bringing forth his pipe, Pete filled it from the beaded tobacco pouch which hung on his breast, and by means of a horn of punk, a flint and steel, he soon had the pipe aglow and was puffing away as calmly as if nothing unusual had occurred. Presently he exclaimed, “Gol durn his daguerrotype, what good did it do him to throw that sheep down the gulch? Reckon Le-loo and me could find a better grave for mutton chops than that canyon bottom. The mountains didn’t need the sheep an’ we did. But, I reckon it was his own sheep you killed, ’cause it had a porcupine collar same pattern as the trimmings of his shirt.”

Turning his great blue eyes full upon me, he suddenly shot this inquiry, “Be he bar, ecutock or werwolf?”“He is the finest adjusted, easiest running, most exquisitely balanced, highest geared bit of human machinery I ever saw,” I answered enthusiastically.

“Wall, maybe ye are right, Le-loo, an’ maybe ye hain’t; which is catamount to saying, maybe it is a man and maybe it tain’t.”

“Steady, Pete, old fellow, let us go slow; now tell me at what you’re driving?” I pleaded.

“It looks to me this hea’-a-way,” he explained. “I’ve seed his trail onct or twice, an’ I’ve seed him onct, but I never yet seed his trail and the Wild Hunter’s trail at the same time and place. ’Pears to me that a man who, when it’s convenient, kin make a wolf of hisself, might likewise make a boy of hisself whenever he felt that way. Never heared tell on enny real laid who cud climb like a squtton and shoot a bow better nor a Robin Hood or Injun, and that’s howsomever!”“Well, it does look ‘howsomever,’ and no mistake,” I admitted, “and what makes it worse, our dinner is at the bottom of this infernal gulch. Come, let us be moving; the breeze from the snowfields chills me. Let us hit his trail now while it is fresh.”

This was a simple proposition to make, but a difficult one to carry into execution; for to all appearances that trail began upon the other side of the chasm, and there was no bridge in sight by which we could cross. Big Pete carefully put a cork-stopper in his pipe, extinguishing the fire without wasting the unconsumed contents; he then carefully put his briarwood away and began to uncoil a lariat from around his middle. As he loosened the braided rawhide from his waist his gaze was roaming over the opposite rocks. Presently he fixed his attention upon a pinnacle which reared its cube-like form above the top of the opposite side of the chasm; the latter was of itself much higher than the brink upon which we stood. Swinging the loop around his head he sent it whistling across the chasm, where it settled and encircled the projecting stone, the honda striking the face of the cliff with a sullen thud. The rope tightened, but when we both threw our weight on our end of the lariat to try it, the cube-like pinnacle moved on its base.

“I oughter knowed better than to try to lasso a piece of slide rock,” said Pete in disgusted tones, as he cast the end of the braided rawhide loose and watched it for a moment dangling down the opposite side of the canyon.

“Now, Le-loo, we must get over this hole or lose the best lariat in the Rocky Mountains. We kin look for that boy’s trail on this side, for even if he be an Ecutock, I’ll bet my crooker bone ’gainst a lock of his hair that he can’t jump th’ hole, an’ I’ll wager my left ear that he’s got a trail an’ a bridge somewhar—’nless he turns bird and flops over things like this,” he added, with a troubled look.

“Pete,” said I, “never mind the bird business. I’ll admit that there is a lot of explanation due us before we can rightly judge on the events of the past few weeks; still I think it may all be explained in a rational manner; but what if it cannot? We have but one trip to make through this world, and the more we see the more we will know at the end of the journey. I am as curious as a prong-horned antelope when there is a mystery, so put your nose to the ground, my good friend, and find the spot where this Mr. Werwolf, witch, or bear flies the canyon, and maybe, like the husband of ‘The Witch of Fife,’ we may find the ‘black crook shell,’ and with its aid fly out of this ’lum.”

“I believe your judication is sound, Le-loo; stay where you be an’ if he hain’t a witch I’ll bet my front tooth agin the string of his moccasin that I’ll find the bridge, and I’ll swear by my grandmother’s hind leg that that little imp will pay for our sheep yit.”

As Pete finished these remarks there was a sudden and astonishing change in his appearance. His head fell forward, his shoulders drooped, his back bowed and his knee bent. It was no longer the upright statuesque Pete the Mountaineer, but Peter the Trailer, all of whose faculties were concentrated upon the ground. With a swinging gait the human bloodhound traveled swiftly and silently along the edge of the crevasse, noting every bunch of moss, fragment of stone, drift of snow or bit of moist earth, reading the shorthand notes of Nature with facility which far excelled the ability of my own stenographer to read her own notes when the latter are a few hours old. But a short time had elapsed before I heard a shout, and, hurrying to the place where my big friend was seated, I inquired, “Any luck?”

“Tha’s as you may call it. Here is wha’ tha’ boy jumped,” he replied, pointing to some marks on the stone which were imperceptible to me, “an’ tha’s wha’ he landed,” he continued, pointing to a slight ledge upon the face of the opposite cliff at least twenty feet distant. “He’s a jumper, an’ no mistake—guess I might as well have my front tooth pulled, fur I’ve lost my bet,” soliloquized the trailer, as he sat on the edge of the cliff, with his legs hanging over the frightful chasm.

The ledge indicated by Big Pete as the landing place of the phenomenal jumper might possibly have offered a foothold for a bighorn or goat, but I could not believe that any human being could jump twenty feet to a crumbling trifle of a ledge on the face of a precipice, and not only retain a foothold there, but run up the face of the rock like a fly on a window-pane. Yet I could see that something had worn the ledge at the point indicated and when I stood a little distance away from the trail I could plainly note a difference in color marking the course of the trail where it led over the flinty rocks to the jumping place.

“Wull, Le-loo! What’s your opinion of the Ecutock now? Do he use wings or ride a barleycorn broom?” asked Pete, with a triumphant smile.