"The beginning of the end," he soliloquized, when once more it was light enough so that standing he could see the earth at his feet. Well he knew that ere this the other horse was eliminated from the chase--that it was now man against man. God! how his joints ached when he stretched them!--how his muscles pained at the slightest motion! He ground his teeth when he first began to walk, and hobbled like a rheumatic cripple; but within a half-hour tenacity had won, and the relentless jog-trot of the interrupted line was measuring off the miles anew.
The chase was nearing an end. Long ere noon, in the distance toward which he was heading, Blair detected a brown dot against the white. Steadily, as he advanced, it resolved itself into the thing he had expected, and stood revealed before him, the centre of a horribly legible page, the last page in the biography of a noble horse. Let us pass it by: Ben did, looking the other way. But a new and terrible vitality possessed him. His weariness left him, as pain passes under an opiate. He did not pause to eat, to drink. Tireless as a waterfall, watchful as a hawk, he jogged on, on, a mile--two miles--five--came to a rise in the great roll of the lands--stopped, his heart suddenly pounding the walls of his chest. Before him, not half a mile away, moving slowly westward, was the diminutive black shape of a man travelling afoot!
Instantly the primal hunting instinct of the Anglo-Saxon awoke in the lank Benjamin. The incomparable fascination which makes man-hunting the sport supreme of all ages gripped him tight. The stealthy cunning of a savage became on the moment his. A plan of ambush, one which could scarcely fail, flashed into his mind. The trail of the divide narrowing now, stretched for miles and miles straight before them. That black figure would scarcely leave it. The pursuer had but to make a great detour, get far in advance, find a point of concealment, and wait.
Swift as thought was action. Back on his trail until he was out of sight went Ben Blair; then, turning to his right, he made straight for the concealing bed of Bad River. Once there, he turned west again, following the winding course of the stream toward its source. Faster than ever he moved, the pat-pat of his feet on the deadening snow drowning the sound of the great breaths he drew into his lungs and sent whistling out again through his nostrils. As with the horse, the sweat oozed at every pore. Collecting on his brow and face, it dripped slowly from his great chin. Dampening, his clothes clung binding-tight to his body; but he never noticed. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor behind him; but, like a sprinter approaching the wire, only straight ahead.