if we changed our trail we could lose them from us?” I was framing a jocose reply about Ounces being a good walker, when the sound of hoofs rushing in the distance stopped me, and he ran out of the tent with his rifle. When I followed with mine he was up the bank, and all his powers alert. But nothing came out of the dimness save our three stampeded horses. They crashed over fallen timber and across the open to where their picketed comrade grazed at the end of his rope. By him they came to a stand, and told him, I suppose, what they had seen; for all four now faced in the same direction, looking away into the mysterious dawn. We likewise stood peering, and my rifle barrel felt cold in my hand. The dawn was all we saw, the inscrutable dawn, coming and coming through the black pines and the gray open of the basin. There above lifted the peaks, no sun yet on them, and behind us our stream made a little tinkling.

“A bear, I suppose,” said I, at length.

His strange look fixed me again, and then his eyes went to the horses. “They smell things we can’t smell,” said he, very slowly. “Will you prove to me they don’t see things we can’t see?” A chill shot through me, and I could not help a frightened glance where we had been watching. But one of the horses began to graze and I had a wholesome thought. “He’s tired of whatever he sees, then,” said I, pointing.

A smile came for a moment in the Virginian’s face. “Must be a poor show,” he observed. All the horses were grazing now, and he added, “It ain’t hurt their appetites any.” We made our own breakfast then. And what uncanny dread I may have been touched with up to this time henceforth left me in the face of a real alarm. The shock of Steve was working upon the Virginian. He was aware of it himself; he was fighting it with all his might; and he was being overcome. He was indeed like a gallant swimmer against whom both wind and tide have conspired. And in this now foreboding solitude there was only myself to throw him ropes. His strokes for safety were as bold as was the undertow that ceaselessly annulled them.

“I reckon I made a fuss in the tent?” said he, feeling his way with me.

I threw him a rope. “Yes. Nightmare--indigestion--too much newspaper before retiring.

He caught the rope. “That’s correct! I had a hell of a foolish dream for a growed-up man. You’d not think it of me.” “Oh, yes, I should. I’ve had them after prolonged lobster and champagne.” “Ah,” he murmured, “prolonged! Prolonged is what does it.” He glanced behind him. “Steve came back--”

“In your lobster dream,” I put in.

But he missed this rope. “Yes,” he answered, with his eyes searching me. “And he handed me the paper-- ”

“By the way, where is that?” I asked.

“I built the fire with it. But when I took it from him it was a six-shooter I had hold of, and pointing at my breast. And then Steve spoke. ‘Do you think you’re fit to live?’ Steve said; and I got hot at him, and I reckon I must have told him what I thought of him. You heard me, I expect?” “Glad I didn’t. Your language sometimes is--”

He laughed out. “Oh, I account for all this that’s happening just like you do. If we gave our explanations, they’d be pretty near twins.” “The horses saw a bear, then?” “Maybe a bear. Maybe “--but here the tide caught him again--“What’s your idea about dreams?” My ropes were all out. “Liver--nerves,” was the best I could do.

But now he swam strongly by himself.