RECREATION 



VOL. XXIII. 



OCTOBER 1905 



No. 4 



THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE GOOSE 



By DAN BEARD 



CHAPTER I. 



THE WILD HUNTER. 



Continued.) 



ECOVERING my- 

 self somewhat from 

 the surprise, I real- 

 ized that what I had 

 seen, strange though 

 it appeared, was not 

 a supernatural oc- 

 currence. I knew 

 that it was a real 

 gun I had heard, real smoke I had seen, 

 real man, real bird, real elk and real 

 wolves, although the latter are a species 

 now supposed to be practically extinct. 

 "But, Pete!" I exclaimed, as a sud- 

 den thought struck me, "what's become 

 of our dogs?" 



"Better ask those black hell-hounds 

 up the mountains. Reckon you won't 

 see them hounds of yours agin." 



And I never did, but having hunted 

 wolves with cowboys and having been 

 a witness to their extraordinary biting 

 power, I knew the fate that must neces- 

 sarily befall a couple of ordinary 

 hounds when overtaken by half a dozen 

 full-grown wolves. My dogs were 

 good ones, but Pete had warned me to 

 leave them behind, and I now know why 



he did so. On such occasions we do 

 not spend much time in grief over a 

 loss of any kind ; "it ain't according to 

 mountain law," Pete would say, and 

 mountain law, as he calls it, being a 

 code of conduct hammered out by hard 

 experience is not as bad or crude as it 

 may appear to those surrounded by the 

 entirely different conditions of a thick- 

 ly populated country. 



"Reckon we had better swipe some 

 of that elk before the coyotes get at 

 it," growled Pete. "The wild mountain 

 man knows the good parts, but an elk 

 is an elk, and one wild man, even if he 

 is a giant, can't carry off all the good 

 meat, not by a long shot." 



"He may come back," I suggested. 



"Not he," said Pete. "He's too stuck- 

 up for that. When he wants more 

 then tha black devils and tha son of 

 a squealer bird of his 'n will get 'em for 

 him, and he a hanging his long legs off 

 'ner a rock somewha' smoking a good 

 cigar." 



"Smoking a what?" I exclaimed. 



"A- cigar," said Pete slowly, as he 

 carved away at the joints of the stag's 

 carcass. 



"Do you think ghosts smoke cigars ?" 

 I asked. 



"Well, if he's an ordinary man, I 



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