FIVE hundred feet above the rocky summit of Devilhead Peak a black speck sailed slowly across the bright blue face of the sky. Dan Alexander, striding along a winding trail close to the foot of the mountain, saw that soaring speck and smiled grimly.
"You're out early, Cloud King," he muttered, "an' right now you're lookin' things over before you decide where you'll hunt. Better keep out o' my way, you bloody murderer, or your hunting'll come to a sudden end. Hello! What's up now?"
The young mountaineer, his rifle resting in the crook of his left elbow, halted and gazed upward. The black speck which was Cloud King no longer circled above the peak. Instead, it was shooting down with that appalling swiftness which distinguishes the peregrine falcon among all the sharptaloned hunters of the air. Wide-eyed and almost breathless, Dan watched that splendid plunge. Then with an exclamation he leaped upon a rock beside the trail whence he could look out over a small grass-grown wheat field in the bottom of the valley.
