THE POCKET HUNTER 



of men, and felt himself in the grip of an 

 Ail-wisdom that killed men or spared them 

 as seemed for their good ; but of^death by- 

 sickness he knew nothing_except that he 

 believed he should never suffer it. He had 

 been in Grape-vine Cafion the year of storms 

 that changed the whole front of the moun- 

 tain. All day he had come down under 

 the wing of the storm, hoping to win past it, 

 but finding it traveling with him until night. 

 It kept on after that, he supposed, a steady 

 downpour, but could not wath certainty 

 say, being securely deep in sleep. But the 

 weather instinct does not sleep. In the 

 night the heavens behind the hill dissolved 

 in rain, and the roar of the storm was borne 

 in and mixed with his dreaming, so that it 

 moved him, still asleep, to get up and out 

 of the path of it. What finally woke him 

 was the crash of pine logs as they went down 

 71 



