Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/99

Rh weakling, even now bowed down with a terrible malady, had inherited the true frontiersman's instincts of his ancestors?

Then all at once Lennox halted in his tracks, evidently with no other purpose than to study the tall form that now was walking up the trail in front of him. And he uttered a little exclamation of amazement.

"Listen, Dan!" he cried suddenly. "Have n't you ever been in the woods before?"

Dan turned, smiling. "No. What have I done now?"

"What have you done! You 're doing something that I never saw a tenderfoot do in my life, before. I 've known men to hunt for years—literally years—and not know how to do it. And that is—to place your feet."

"Place my feet? I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I mean—to walk silently. To stalk, damn it, Dan! This brush is dry. It's dry as tinder. A cougar can get over it like so much smoke, and a man who's lived all his life in the hills can usually climb a ridge and not make any more noise than a young avalanche. Just now I had a feeling that I was n't hearing you walk, and I thought my ears must be going back on me. I stopped to see. You were doing it, Dan. You were stalking—putting