Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/40

32 men who get their exercise in walking game trails rather than in swinging Indian clubs, he knew how to make the long miles slide under his feet. It is not an accomplishment of a day—that bent-kneed, shuffling walk, shoulders sagging and feet falling lightly—and it is far from graceful. But it clicks out four miles in every hour through the long mountain day without fatigue. It carries a man up mountains and into glens, and he feels fresh at the end. To-night Pete was in a particular hurry. The devils that dwell just under the dark skins of all his race were crying for strong drink. Besides, darkness would be upon them very soon.

The pace took Gaylord's wind. It brought queer pains low in his chest and an odd heaviness in his legs. But for all that, a physician could have prescribed no better medicine for him. The sweat leaped from his white skin and felt prickly at his neck and forehead, and the fumes of alcohol departed from his brain. The truth was that in this deepening twilight Gaylord saw more clearly than any time since his arrival at Smoky Land.

His senses became more alert, his eyes began to penetrate deeper into the thickets. He began to notice dainty mountain flowers, and he took a singular delight in the tracks of the wild things that had been left in the trail. Here a coyote had skulked, here a wolf had raced along in some chase of death, and here a cougar had crept by