he would have been safe within its barricade of stiff, unyielding branches; but twenty feet from its portals a great dark shape fell upon him from the sky, struck long needle-pointed claws into his neck and breast, slashed his throat with a hooked knife-edged beak which ripped through feathers and flesh and severed his wind-pipe.
Storm-Rider the golden eagle stood for a moment upon the quivering body of his victim, his wings half-spread, his proud head lifted high. Then with a scream he tore his talons loose from the turkey's body and with quick, powerful wing-beats lifted himself into the air.
He was just in time. From the hedge of alders forty feet to his right, a great tawny form was racing across the sand in long bounds. High over the bleeding prostrate turkey Koe-Ishto the puma leaped, and landing on a bare space of level rock just beyond, launched his long sinewy body upward. A big furry paw, bristling with curved retractile claws, swished like a flail not six inches under the eagle.
For a fraction of a second the fierce eyes of the king of the air looked into the pale glittering orbs of the king of the forest. Then, as the eagle's laboring wings lifted him higher, Koe-Ishto turned, walked slowly back to where the gobbler lay, picked up the big bronze bird in his jaws, and carried it to-
