"You're crazier about hunting than I am." "Wet bushes," Swan corrected carelessly.

"I been tramping since daylight.

It's my work to hunt, like it's your work to ride." He had swung into the trail ahead of John Doe and was walking with long strides,--the tallest, straightest, limberest young Swede in all the country.

He had the bluest eyes, the readiest smile, the healthiest color, the sunniest hair and disposition the Sawtooth country had seen for many a day.

He had homesteaded an eighty-acre claim on the south side of Bear Top and had by that means gained possession of two living springs and the only accessible portion of Wilder Creek where it crossed the meadow called Skyline before it plunged into a gulch too narrow for cattle to water with any safety.
The Sawtooth Cattle Company had for years "covered" that eighty-acre patch of government land, never dreaming that any one would ever file on it.