Raymond S. Spears

“ Far to the northward was another barrier range like the Singing Birds, so distant that its green was like dark crystal, its bare tops like pearl shell, and as far as he could see the fur thief pursuer could not see one sign of human occupation, although here and there were low areas of bare valley in which he would doubtless find cow outfits, nesters in the stream bottoms and perhaps the hidden cabins of fugitives from detectives, sheriffs, marshals and other representatives of justice. ”

“ At the trap cabins none approached without keen, nervous suspicion. Conklin recalled the anxiety of all the south-side feathered tribes, and realized that this fur seeker had shot all he could to use them for trap bait. The cubbies were fluffed with the jays, grouse and other fliers. And so the mountains some one had called the Singing Birds had become the land of frightened living things, even over south where the flocks went to enjoy the sunshine of the warmer slope.
Conklin had nearly two hours of daylight ahead. At ten miles he would hardly be seen, even with ordinary glasses. ”

“ The perpendicular tree-trunks stood at a sharper angle on the slopes. This was a pretty gap through a low and attractive mountain range. It was great ranch country. And there were cattle about. The quick ears of the trailer heard a heifer mooing almost under her breath not far off to the westward.
Conklin had not expected a ranch. He came to a barbed wire fence in the narrows, a few posts set across the bottom. No cow could go along either side because it was so steep. At the gate the trapper hesitated. After all, the trap-line cabin was beyond the summit of this mountain ridge. ”

“ He could take no chances with the man he was pursuing. Had he been closer to the fellow he might easily have run into a fatal ambush. There was a difference between pursuing even a savage pack of stock-killing wolves and going after a man armed with a heavy, far-reaching rifle and no doubt long familiar with the strategems of sheriff posses and clandestine man-hunting ruses. ”

“ He saw plainly that the thief had not anticipated any masculine presence in the desolation he had traversed.
“They always fool themselves, they deceive their own souls!” Conklin laughed to himself. “He must have expected the very storm gods to cover his trail with snow.”
One thing especially indicated that Tom Redding had been the invader, for the pack horse tracks led into the blazed trail which had come down from the mountain crest and crossed the timber belt to the lower edge in the effort to seize the fur-pocket for his own. ”