The Way of the Wild (Sass)/The Bachelors of Devilhead
_3.png)
FOR a week the daisy-starred upland meadows al had danced and glittered in sunlight much to warm for June. Then, in the early afternoon of the seventh day, a great storm broke about the craggy summit of Devilhead and for three hours or more the cannon of the clouds rumbled and roared amid the peaks. Young Dan Alexander, watching the spectacle from the deep valley under Devilhead, talked to himself, as was his habit.
"Cloud King and Red Rogue," he muttered, "you're gettin' some music now; an' up where you are that thunder's ten times as loud. I wonder how you like it."
They liked it little, because all this tumult of the elements was a departure from the normal course of things and interfered seriously with the necessary business of life. Yet neither Cloud King, the peregrine falcon, nor Red Rogue, the fox, who had their homes on Devilhead within twenty yards of each other, was frightened by the storm. They knew what it was, having experienced many storms in their time, and they took it calmly enough.
Red Rogue dozed quietly on a dry bed of leaves at the inner end of the deep natural tunnel which was his favorite den. Here, in the heart of the huge rock mass forming Devilhead's summit, the old fox was snug and safe from wind and rain and lightning, while even the mightiest of the thunderclaps came to his ears so softened and subdued that the storm seemed miles away. Cloud King, the falcon, had no such remote retreat. The wind and the rain beat upon the portal of his castle; the glare of the lightning lit its inmost recesses; the crash of the thunder was like the crack of doom. But Cloud King, the peregrine, was a brother of the thunder, a son of the mountain storms. All his life he had dwelt with them and they struck no terror to his heart. While Red Rogue slept peacefully in his rock-ribbed fortress, the big gray duck hawk stood alert and wakeful in his aerie, a small cave in the face of the cliff fifty feet above the entrance of Red Rogue's den, and watched with sullen, undismayed eyes the prodigious drama of the storm.
Dan Alexander, gazing up at the peak from the porch of his father's cabin under Devilhead, guessed that this would be the way of it. A rare man was Dan. He had had some schooling and even a year at college in a city of the lowlands; but his mountains had called to him and presently he had returned to share with his father the little cabin under Devilhead, to farm a little after the fashion of the mountaineers and to indulge to the utmost his passion for hunting. He knew the beasts and the birds of the upland woods as few mountain woodsmen have known them; and somewhere in him there was a romantic, imaginative strain, strengthened and developed by his schooling and by the books he had read, which caused him to give names to certain ones among the wild creatures which, for one reason or another, strongly stirred his interest.
Chief among these were the two dwellers on Devilhead peak. Many times Dan's path had crossed that of Red Rogue, the old dog fox. Day after day he had watched Cloud King, the peregrine falcon, patroling the air roads of his wide kingdom. Again and again he had seen the bloody handiwork of these two wild hunters who inhabited the inaccessible cliff at the summit of the mountain; and long ago he had declared war against them, matching his skill and woodcraft against their wiliness and swiftness, finding all the more pleasure in the contest when he learned, as he very soon did, that the two buccaneers of Devilhead were well able to take care of themselves.
For weeks he had hunted them persistently, neglecting all other game, often lying in ambush on the mountain's summit above the precipice where they had their homes, even risking his life in an effort to traverse the face of the cliff itself. Once he had clipped a feather from Cloud King's wing; once and once only he had looked at Red Rogue along the barrel of a rifle. It was a long shot and the bullet had gone an inch too high. Angry and piqued because his woodcraft had been set at naught, Dan nevertheless realized that he was wasting his time and abandoned his intensive campaign. But he did not acknowledge himself beaten. On the contrary, he was constantly on the alert for the opportunity which he was satisfied would come. Always, when he roamed the mountain slopes and valleys in search of grouse or turkeys or squirrels, he kept Red Rogue and Cloud King in mind; and always, when he looked up at the huge mountain towering above his cabin, his eyes sought the lofty cliff where the two wild hunters had their homes.
For many minutes he gazed at that cliff on the June afternoon when, after a week of heat and drought, the first summer storm of the season broke about Devilhead's summit. The rain, which was fast hiding the mountain, was drenching the valley also. Already the first big drops were pattering on the roof of Dan's cabin. There were chores to be attended to, but for the present he must wait under shelter until the worst of the storm had passed. So, with feet cocked up on the railing of the porch, he sat and puffed at his old black pipe, watching the onward sweep of a great leaden cloud which barely topped the peak a thousand feet above him across the narrow valley, marveling a little at the play of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, idly wondering how the two dwellers on Devilhead were faring in the storm.
Presently Dan's gray eyes narrowed and brightened. He took the pipe from his mouth and pursed his lips, frowning thoughtfully and drumming on his knee with long bony fingers.
"It'll rain all afternoon an' pretty much all night," he muttered. "They'll not be able to hunt an' they'll be hungry in the mornin'. Lord knows where Cloud King'll go; but I'll bet a hat Red Rogue'll go straight to Rocky Meadow as soon as the grass is dry an' pick up some mice to take the sting out of his appetite."
Dan knocked out his pipe, yawned and stretched his long arms, bare to the elbow.
"Got a good notion to meet him there 'bout an hour after sunup," he said to himself.
At first dawn Red Rogue awoke. He had slept blissfully throughout the night, seeming somehow aware, even in the retirement of his rocky retreat, that outside the rain was still falling. Red Rogue did not like rain. He hated to get his fur or even his feet wet; and though he was hungry, he was loath to leave the shelter of his dry bed until the sun had shone for at least a little while on the drenched grasses and weeds of the high upland meadows. So, although the rain had ceased a little before dawn, the old fox, after considering the situation for a moment without moving, went to sleep again and dozed until after sunrise. Then he rose, stretched his long, lithe, rusty-red body lazily, scratched a black-tipped ear with a black hind foot, and trotted briskly toward the exit of his rock-walled tunnel.
On the narrow shelf outside he halted, testing the wind with quivering nostrils while his gaze roved over the vast panorama spread before him. The storm had washed the air clean and crystal clear; the heat which had lain so heavy on the land for seven days had broken; there was a sharp nip in the gentle breeze, which drove the last vestige of drowsiness from Red Rogue's brain.
That cold, crisp air was like wine. Red Rogue was old—so old that for two springs he had not mated, though he was still strong of wind and limb; but, old though he was, he was sensible of the magic of the morning and felt new energy and vigor in every fibre of his body.
His eyes shining, his slim ears cocked, his long, beautiful, white-tipped tail held high behind him, he drank the faint fragrance of a million daisies and looked out over his blue-and-purple kingdom of mountain and valley. Once, for a moment, his gaze rested on Dan Alexander's cabin nestling in the oak and chestnut woods clothing the gorgelike valley far below. As though the sight of that cabin were a challenge, he barked three times, each bark a clear thin note, less querulous than usual, with something of joy and something of confident defiance in the ring of it. Then jauntily, with mincing steps and elevated brush, he trotted along the shelf and, lightly leaping a gap in the narrow way, passed around a jutting shoulder of the cliff with never a glance at the abysmal chasm yawning under him.
Indifferently, with no change of expression in his grim dark eyes, Cloud King, the peregrine falcon, watched him go. The big duck hawk took little interest in the old red fox who shared with him the craggy summit of Devilhead; but because it was his business to watch every moving thing within range of his vision, his eyes followed Red Rogue as he picked his sure-footed way around the precipitous face of the cliff, until he vanished in a dense kalmia thicket fringing the rocky forehead of the mountain. Yet, except that the nature of wild things forbade it, there might have existed a certain fellow feeling between these two dwellers on Devilhead's loftiest peak.
Not only were they near neighbors, sharing the security of a precipice virtually inaccessible to man. They shared, too, the distinction of bachelorhood—a real distinction in their case, because it indicated that they had been victors in the stern battle for life, and, eluding death in many forms, had won through to old age, when love and mating no longer interested them.
Even as Red Rogue was mateless, so, too, was Cloud King. If a mate had come to him he might have taken her. But the peregrine, boldest and most destructive of the falcons, had been the hated enemy of mankind for generations and its numbers had been thinned. Never abundant in the high inland region around Devilhead, where there were no large rivers or extensive lakes to attract ducks, the peregrine's favorite prey, this swiftest and handsomest of all the hawk kind had all but vanished from the mountain country.
For this Cloud King cared nothing. He was as contented in his loneliness as was Red Rogue, the fox; and the absence of other buccaneers of his race meant simply a larger food supply for himself. Only occasionally did the golden eagles, which nested farther to the westward, invade his hunting ground. In general he enjoyed a virtual monopoly—so far as other preying birds were concerned—of the ruffed grouse, the choicest game which the mountain country afforded, while quail and doves were abundant enough to supply his own needs as well as those of the lesser hawks which also hunted them. Except when the imperial eagles came, Cloud King was lord of all the airy spaces above the peaks and valleys, a monarch as valiant as he was ruthless, swift as the wind, thewed and muscled more powerfully in proportion to his size than any other bird of prey—a perfect specimen of the "Noble Peregrine" which the knights of ancient time, who delighted in falconry, considered the premier bird of the chase.
From his aerie fifty feet above the entrance of Red Rogue's den, Cloud King saw the old fox pass around the shoulder of the cliff and vanish amid the kalmias. Then, as though the sight of his neighbor going forth to the hunt had whetted his own appetite, he spread his dark barred wings, much longer than those of most other hawks, and swept out from the face of the precipice. After a few strong wing thrusts, he closed his pinions and dropped for perhaps thirty feet. Spreading his wings again, he planed down a long incline, gaining speed every second, rushing down toward the billowy tops of the tall chestnuts at the bottom of the deep valley. When it seemed that in another instant he must crash into the uppermost branches of the trees, he checked his descent by an almost imperceptible movement of his wings and sped onward past the tree tops and across a little wheat field a hundred yards behind Dan Alexander's cabin.
A score of startled eyes saw him as he cleared the chestnut tops. Almost in the center of the wheat field stood a small wild cherry tree loaded with shining crimson fruit—crowded, too, with birds from the surrounding woods and thickets. Brown thrashers, catbirds, wood thrushes, towhees and one brilliant black-winged scarlet tanager were feasting in the cherry tree when the feathered cannon ball shot into view from behind the chestnut grove; and, of them all, the tanager, partial as always to the higher branches, was the most exposed, seeking his breakfast amid the topmost twigs. With a frightened cry the blood-red bird darted from his perch; but Cloud King, his eye caught instantly by that vivid spot of color, gripped him with long black talons before he had flown five feet.
When he had plucked and eaten his prey in a tall white oak which was one of his favorite feeding stations, the big duck hawk set about the real business of the day. The tanager was merely an appetizer. Often in cherry time Cloud King began his morning with a raid on the small birds which breakfasted at the small but prolific tree in the wheat field a thousand feet below his aerie; but he was never content with such trivial game, and these morning raids were little more than diversions.
Leaving the white oak, he spiraled upward, mounting higher and higher above the deep narrow valley, until he looked down upon the peak of Devilhead itself. Still higher he rose, so high that the flutelike tones of wood thrushes singing on the wooded mountain slopes no longer came to him; so high that he could view from end to end the whole summit of the long irregular ridge of which Devilhead peak was the loftiest eminence. Here and there, on saddles of this high ridge, the hardwood forest which clothed the slopes and most of the summit fell away, giving place to small natural meadows embosomed like lakes of vivid green in the darker green of the surrounding woods. Suddenly a small dark object in one of these meadows almost directly beneath him arrested Cloud King's attention.
A man looking down from that vast height would have distinguished nothing worthy of special note. The tiny object upon which the hawk's eyes were fixed would have appeared no different from a hundred other dark spots on the green grass carpet—spots which were merely rocks and bowlders, from the abundance of which Rocky Meadow got its name. Nor would a human eye have perceived that this particular dark spot was moving—moving gradually and intermittently, inch by inch and foot by foot, out toward the center of the grassy space. Yet to the marvelous eyes of Cloud King not only was the slow movement of this dark object perceptible but so also was almost every detail of the object itself.
To the eyes of the circling peregrine this dark spot among many other dark spots was a man—a man crawling on hands and knees and carrying a rifle in his right hand. More than that, Cloud King's eyes disclosed to him exactly what man this was; for they could distinguish the brown canvas cap and the gray woolen shirt which belonged to the tall young woodsman who lived in the valley under Cloud King's aerie on Devilhead. So much the peregrine's wonderful vision told him. Had his brain been as perfectly developed as his eyes, he might presently have seen more than this; for he would then have deduced a purpose in the slow, sinister advance of the hunter across the rock-strewn meadow, and he would have scanned the ground to discover what game it was that the hunter was stalking so cautiously.
But Cloud King's powers of reasoning did not extend so far. He saw the man and watched him curiously; but nothing told him that this man was engaged upon a very definite quest now nearing a climax. His attention centered upon the hunter, the falcon saw the smaller dark spot which was Red Rogue, the fox, without distinguishing its nature.
Had this smaller spot moved while Cloud King was circling above the meadow, his eyes would have focused upon it instantly and he would have recognized his neighbor of Devilhead peak. But Red Rogue, after catching a mouse or two,had discovered a cottontail feeding on certain juicy stems which grew along the tiny stream meandering across the meadow, and he had now completed his preparations for a cottontail breakfast. Making a wide detour, he had posted himself behind a rock toward which the rabbit was moving slowly, following the course of the brook. Close to this rock the old fox sat on his haunches as motionless as a stump, unaware of the hunter, down the wind from him and at his back, crawling nearer and nearer and skillfully utilizing the scattered rocks and bowlders of the meadow to screen his approach.
For perhaps five minutes the peregrine swung in wide circles high above Rocky Meadow, watching the hunter idly yet intently, never suspecting that in the green amphitheatre far beneath him the stage was being set for a tragedy. Then, the edge of his curiosity dulled, he resumed his spiral ascent. Up and up he climbed, passing through and above a thin mistlike layer of cloud which, for all its gauzy tenuousness, presently shut the earth from his view. Two hundred feet above this cloud blanket the big hawk careened suddenly in the air, like a schooner struck by a sudden squall. Righting himself with a few swift thrusts of his pinions, he turned his head eastward and, with wings widely extended, shot at terrific speed in that direction, his long barred tail twisting spasmodically to right and left.
Unknowingly and without warning the falcon had climbed up into a current of warm air rushing through space like a vast invisible river to fill some hole or hollow in the upper atmosphere produced by the storm of the previous night. Cloud King disliked being jostled and hustled in this fashion; but the aerial river was bearing him in the direction which he had intended to follow as soon as he had gained the desired altitude. Hence, for a while, he was content to ride on the wings of this ghostly soundless gale racing on its mysterious way above the clouds which hid the world.
Mile after mile the peregrine rode the wind, balancing himself with slight movements of his wings and tail, borne eastward at a rate which nearly equaled the swiftest pace at which his own pinions could have driven him. Then, apprised by some faculty beyond human ken that he was approaching the high ridge where he intended to hunt ruffed grouse, he adjusted the rudder of his tail in such a way as to guide him downward in a gradual slant toward the white cloud blanket far beneath him. As suddenly as he had entered it, he passed out of the rushing river of wind into air which was practically still; and a few minutes later, spiraling downward, he plunged into the stratum of cloud. Through this shallow sea of vapor he dropped swiftly with half-closed wings and presently saw the familiar panorama of forested mountain and valley spread beneath him.
Something else also he saw—something which immediately riveted his attention. Far away to the westward, just under the white cloud blanket, a black speck moved across the sky—a speck which resolved itself at once to Cloud King's farsighted eyes as a large, long-necked, short-tailed bird flying at high speed with rapid, powerful wing beats. Instantly the peregrine forgot the ruffed grouse which frequented the wooded slope beneath him and in quest of which he had traveled many miles from the aerie on Devilhead. Here was game even choicer and far rarer than the drumming cocks of the upland woods—game not often to be had among the mountains and not to be neglected when some fortunate chance brought it into the mountain country.
Cloud King had no doubt that the big long-bodied bird, speeding westward on whirring wings five hundred feet above the long valley of the Chinquapin, was a duck. Even at that great distance he could see its contour plainly. Its shape was that of a duck and it flew as a duck flies. Yet it seemed too large to be either a wood duck or a hooded merganser, the only species of the duck tribe at all likely to be seen in the high uplands in early summer. But the question of its precise identity was of little concern to the peregrine. It mattered little what kind of duck this was. All the ducks were royal provender; and the moment called for action, not speculation.
An instant Cloud King hung almost motionless in the air, like a runner who nerves himself for the start of a hard race. Then his long pointed wings began to move with regular measured strokes—strokes which seemed deliberate and unhurried, yet somehow gave an impression of great power. Faster and faster those calm, monotonously even wing beats drove his hard, muscular body forward; and gradually, imperceptibly, as the speed of his flight increased, the movement of his long pinions became more rapid. But never at this stage of the chase was there any appearance of undue exertion. The big hawk was driving through the air at a rate far exceeding that of the fastest locomotive; yet he seemed not to hurry at all, but sped on his way as easily and lightly as a migrating swallow.
It may be that a definite purpose, to which he reacted instinctively rather than through exercise of any reasoning faculty, governed the falcon's tactics. It was often his custom tc carry choice bits of game to his aerie on the cliff; and if in this instance he postponed the fatal blow for a while, he would not have to transport the carcass so far, for his quarry was heading straight up the valley toward the blue peak of Devilhead, dimly visible in the distance. Possibly, on the other hand, the seeming deliberateness of his flight was simply an instinctive recognition of the fact that this was likely to be a hard chase, in which he must not wear himself out at the beginning. His quarry had a long start; the test was one of endurance as well as speed. With all his superb muscular development, the falcon might not win this race if at the outset he expended his strength too lavishly.
So, for a space of minutes, Cloud King's long dark pinions fanned the air with a motion scarcely more rapid than that which he habitually employed when journeying to some outlying corner of his widespread kingdom. Nevertheless, the keen, fierce eyes, fixed immovably upon that flying form far ahead, told him that he was gaining. As a matter of fact, the peregrine, though he had not yet called all his powers into play, was flying nearly twice as fast as his prospective victim.
The latter—a long-bodied, torpedo-shaped, grayand-white bird, considerably larger than a mallard, and marked with a chestnut patch on his throat—was evidently unaware of his peril. His rather short wings, smiting the air rapidly, drove his heavy projectilelike body forward at high speed. But that speed had not been increased in the few minutes which had elapsed since the beginning of the chase; those wing beats had grown no more rapid. The big bird, unconscious of the stern, masterful pursuer racing after him and still far in his rear, was flying at the rate characteristic of the red-throated loon when migrating or when journeying overland from one feeding ground to another.
It was a journey of the latter sort that the loon was now undertaking. Having depleted the fish resources of one small mountain lake, he was in search of another; and since the mountain region was strange to him and lakes were very few and small, he was eagerly scanning the country over which he passed. He was in that country as the result of accident. A bird of the seacoast, whose summer home was the upper North, he had started on his return to Labrador, when a spring gale of unusual violence blew him far inland. Winging his way over forested ridges and valleys, he saw beneath him a small lake not unlike those of his Canadian home. Here he had alighted, and, finding the lake well stocked with fish, here he had been content to linger.
Spring came later to the mountains than to the coast, and when, as the days grew warmer, the migratory urge took hold of him again, the normal time of his mating was far past. Perhaps for that reason the instinct which should have sent him on toward the Arctic was dulled and crippled. Vaguely discontented and somewhat lonely, twice he rose into the air to fly to the far-off boreal land where his fellows were nesting; and twice instinct failed him and he returned.
Thus he had stayed on, an accidental exile in a region where his kind were almost unknown; and as spring merged into summer his restlessness gradually passed, and, despite the unaccustomed warmth, he grew more and more contented with his placid little lake, ringed round with alders and shaded by tall hemlocks and gigantic tulip trees. He might have remained there months longer but for the fact that after a while the fish upon which he fed became inconveniently scarce. It was this exigency, the failure of his food supply, which finally compelled him to seek a new fishing ground; and it was grim chance which directed his flight southward across a high balsam-covered range, then westward up the long valley of the Chinquapin, toward Devilhead peak, where Cloud King, the peregrine, had his home.
A third of the distance to Devilhead had been covered when at last the red-throated loon became aware of his pursuer. By that time—and scarcely more than five minutes had elapsed since the beginning of the chase, so swiftly were the two birds moving—the hawk had cut down the distance between himself and his quarry by more than half. Cloud King now knew that the big bird ahead of him and perhaps a hundred feet below him was not a duck of any of the species known to him; but he judged it to be of the duck kind, and although it was larger than the birds upon which he was accustomed to prey, he was more determined than ever to attack and kill it. He could not grapple so large a bird in the air. Instead, he planned to fall upon it from above and hurl it to the ground. The chase had fanned into fierce flame the fury which possessed him in moments of violent action, and his bold spirit counted no odds of size or weight.
The peregrine was instantly aware that his approach had been discovered. The loon's pinions whirred twice as rapidly as before; his long body leaped forward and shot onward at a speed which was a startling revelation of his powers. Cloud King's fierce eyes glowed with a sterner light; his great yellow feet, armed with long, black, needle-pointed talons, opened and closed convulsively. Suddenly he screamed—a wild, shrill cry which the fugitive might have interpreted as a cry of disappointment and baffled rage.
Yet, though he no longer gained, and perhaps even dropped a little behind, the falcon apparently made no effort to increase the velocity of his flight. His long wings still smote the air with that deliberateness and evenness of stroke which gave a sinister impression of confident mastery of the situation and seemed somehow to hint of hidden powers still held in reserve.
The red-throated loon was fleeing for his life. Terror gripped him, and in the clutch of that terror he was exerting every atom of his strength. But Cloud King, the peregrine, even in the wild fury of the chase, was cool, skillful, clear-headed, a master craftsman; and the craft, the business of the peregrine, is the pursuit of swift, strong-winged birds, some of them—like the teal, for instance—among the swiftest of all the birds that fly. Instinctively Cloud King knew the strategy of the problem before him, the age-old problem of his kind. He made no mistake, was betrayed into no false step. The sudden burst of speed which seemed to forecast the fugitive's escape was no surprise to the pursuer. On the contrary, the latter expected it; for always at the moment of discovery, this spurt came.
The question—the only important question—was, how long would the spurt last? And until he had some indication of the answer Cloud King was far too expert at this game of life and death—a game which his forbears had played for countless centuries—to call upon that reserve of strength which might be needed before the end.
Quickly he had his answer. After a minute or two he saw that the rapidity of the fugitive's wing strokes was slackening; and presently the hawk's intent, unwinking eyes, marvelously accurate measurers of distance, told him that the space between pursuer and pursued was beginning to diminish again.
In that moment Cloud King knew that the victory was his whenever he chose to grasp it; and he knew also that the moment was near at hand. The tall peak of Devilhead, which at the beginning of the chase had stood pale and dim on the blue horizon, now reared its dark forested bulk scarcely more than three miles away. In another minute or so the loon would be directly over the long irregular ridge of which Devilhead crag, at the ridge's southern end, was the apex.
Suddenly—so suddenly that the effect was mysterious and startling, as though some unseen outside force had hurled the hawk forward—Cloud King doubled his speed. Gone now was that appearance of grim, calm, masterful deliberateness. The long pointed wings were driving now as hard and as fast as muscle and sinew could drive them; and the peregrine, still a hundred feet higher than his quarry, was overhauling the fugitive almost as though the latter were standing still.
A half minute more and Cloud King's head reached downward, his fierce eyes measuring the distance. Again he screamed and again the great yellow feet with their armament of trenchant claws opened and shut beneath him. Then, his wings half closed, his talons spread, his barred tail open like a fan, he shot down upon his victim.
Dan Alexander, flat on his stomach behind a low mossy bowlder near the center of Rocky Meadow, heard that scream faintly, but was too busy to glance upward. He had completed his long stalk at last; and now, for the second time in his life, he was looking at Red Rogue, the fox, along the barrel of a rifle. Dan was supremely content. He had given much time and labor to this bit of still-hunting and had crawled painfully across half the width of Rocky Meadow. But he had not taken all this trouble in vain. Red Rogue, still sitting on his haunches beside the big bowlder near the brook, was an easy target. Dan, squinting along his rifle barrel, was debating whether to aim for the middle of that rusty-red back—in which case he could not miss—or risk a fancy shot at the fox's head.
Red Rogue also heard the peregrine's scream; and he also was too busy at that moment to concern himself with the business of his neighbor of Devilhead peak. The cottontail, nibbling her way along the brook margin, had nibbled in leisurely fashion and—had kept the old fox waiting a long while for his breakfast. Now, however, the rabbit had approached within a few yards of the bowlder. In another minute or two Red Rogue's chance would come.
Of the three who were playing the grim game of hunter and hunted in Rocky Meadow, only the cottontail had even a moment's warning of the strange thing that occurred. At the falcon's scream she crouched low in the weeds beside the brook, her frightened eyes searching the sky. She saw a dark body hurtling downward and she crouched still lower, expecting each moment to feel the hawk's talons in her flank. But neither Red Rogue nor Dan Alexander saw that falling body. Neither of these two knew that it was falling until it struck the ground between the hunter and the fox, not more than ten feet behind the fox's back.
Red Rogue never knew what it was that fell from the sky. He did not stop to investigate its nature. Startled half out of his wits by a swish of wind and a sudden heavy thud directly behind him and close by, he leaped over the bowlder in front and raced twenty yards at top speed before he looked back.
He saw the tall young woodsman who lived in the cabin under Devilhead running forward, rifle in hand; and, changing his direction slightly, the old fox continued on his way.
As for Dan, he quickly unraveled one mystery. But another and deeper one remained. When he had examined the big bird which had fallen out of the clouds—a queer bird of a kind that he had never before seen in the mountains—and discovered that its back was ripped and torn from neck to tail as though sharp claws had raked it, he remembered that faintly heard scream, and, looking up, he saw Cloud King, the peregrine, circling high in the air. He knew then why the unknown bird had fallen.
Yet he was puzzled and a little troubled. The superstition of the mountain folk, inherited from generations of ancestors, was strong in him. This thing which had happened before his eyes was strange beyond all imagining, a marvel for which there was no precedent in all his experience of the woods. Another moment and he would have sent a bullet crashing into Red Rogue's back or brain; but in that moment Cloud King, the falcon, appearing suddenly in the sky, had saved the life of the neighbor with whom he shared the solitude of Devilhead crag.
In spite of himself, Dan wondered whether the strange thing which he had witnessed was not a sign, an omen—perhaps a grim, uncanny warning like those of which old women in the mountain cabins sometimes told. Even while he mocked his own thoughts, Dan knew that, for a while at any rate, he would hunt the bachelors of Devilhead no more.