The air was tingling and electric, just as Ben recalled it a thousand nights.  Everywhere the hunters were leaving their lairs and starting forth; grasses moved and brush-clumps rustled; blood was hot and savage eyes were shot with fire.  The mink, with unspeakable savagery, took the trail of a snow-shoe rabbit beside the river-bed; a lynx with pale, green, luminous eyes began his stalk of a tree squirrel, and various of Fenris’ fellows—­pack brothers except for his own relations with men—­sang a song that was old when the mountains were new as they raced, black in silhouette against the paling sky, along a snowy ridge.

Ben felt a quickening of his own senses, not knowing why. His blood, too, spurted inordinately fast through his veins, and his flesh seemed to creep and tingle.  There could be no surer proof of his legitimacy as a son of the wilderness.  The passions that maddened the first men, near to the beasts they hunted in their ancient forests, returned in all their fullness.  The dusk deepened.  The trail dimmed so that the eye had to strain to follow it.

Complex and weird were the passions invoked to-night, but not even to the gray wolf that is, beyond all other creatures, the embodiment of the wilderness spirit, did there come such a madness, such a dark and terrible lust, as that which cursed a certain wayfarer beyond the next bend in the river.  This was not one of the forest people, neither the lynx, nor the hunting otter, nor even the venerable grizzly with whom no one contests the trail.  It was a human being,—­a man of youthful body and strong, deeply lined, yet savage face.

A close observer would have noticed the faintest tremor and shiver throughout his body.  His eyes were very bright, vivid even in the dying day.  He was deeply lost in his own mood, seemingly oblivious to the whole world about him.  He carried a rifle in his hands.

He was on his way to report to his chief; and just what would be forthcoming he did not know.  But if too much objection were raised and affairs got to a crucial stage, he had nothing to fear.  He had learned a certain lesson—­an avenue to triumph.  It was strange that he had never hit upon it before.

His blood was scalding hot, and he was swept by exultation.  Not for an instant had he hesitated, nor Would he ever hesitate again.  There was no one in the North of greater might than he!  No one could bend his will from now on.  He had found the road to triumph.

Ray Brent had discovered a new power within himself.  Perhaps even his chief, Jeffery Neilson, must yield before his new-found strength.

XIII

As twilight darkened to the full gloom of the forest night, Ben and Beatrice rode to a lonely cabin on the Yuga River,—­one that had been built by Hiram Melville years past and was just at the mouth of the little creek on which, less than a half-mile distant, he had his claim.  They had seen a lighted window from afar, marking the end of Beatrice’s hard day’s ride.