THE MAN IN SADDLE
oned the past, and perceived that because he had refused to fail he had never done so. Then certainly this was to be a success. Problems that rose upon him for the next day restored his courage. They were difficult. They required the whole of his brain in cooperation with imagination—the imagination of the mathematician calculating toward an unknown quantity, making the brain servant to the inspiration. In a few years he had worked out his problem, perfecting it, a method of capture all his own. Now in a few hours he had to readapt the formula of the plains to the mountains, to reckon what must be added, what could be left out. It must be a triumph of omissions, both because time was to be husbanded and because of the difficulty of work in the forest without leaving the signs of work. On the plains the trails of men are more easily erased. The footsteps are covered with dust carried by the wind, and the same wind in the wide open carries away the human scent; but here with forest on every side, the spongy soil underfoot, and an air shut in among heights, there were delicate surfaces on every side to take the print of the human, and report his elicit presence to delicate, superhuman senses.
The men moved as guardedly as thieves in a house. A broken branch would have been a warning to
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