Ishto's mate lying asleep in a shady spot near the cave where soft, fernlike mosses covered the ground. Ten minutes later the life passed out of her, and Koe Ishto, returning to the cave towards evening, found her lying bloody and stiff upon the moss.
The cubs no longer needed their mother's milk. They were old enough now to subsist entirely upon meat, and Koe Ishto easily supplied their wants. He had been hunting deer for them in the deep woods of the lower slopes when he chanced upon the Raven and his companions making their way along a trail leading to the summit, a trail which passed within a hundred yards of the cubs' new home. At once he had forgotten the deer and had shadowed the hunters as they pushed upward through the forest; and now, when the cubs' den lay not half a mile distant, the fear which had gripped him the moment he recognized Fergus Gilyan had mounted and sharpened and swelled until he was conscious of nothing else.
Sir Alexander Twining was a proud man and sound of wind and limb. But he had never before climbed mountains and at last his extremity got the better of his pride. He whispered to Gilyan that he could go no farther, and when Gilyan had informed the Raven of the fact the tall Indian stood for a moment in thought. Koe Ishto's lair, he told
