But nobody on Lonesome knew that it was Christmas Eve, although a child of the outer world could have guessed it, even out in those wilds where Lonesome slipped from one lone log cabin high up the steeps, down through a stretch of jungled darkness to another lone cabin at the mouth of the stream.

Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with the underlying streak of yellow that was leading him whither, God only knewonce only Buck looked back.