Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/241

Rh nerves. Nearer—ever nearer—and now they were just below him. He had sunk so low against the crag that he looked more like a great tawny serpent than a feline. His tail twitched at its very tip as he crept on,—a few feet more. The whole realm was hung with that tense silence of the high mountains, a stillness wherein not even a wind whispers and the heart pounds like a drum in the breast.

This was not a coyote to be frightened away by an attitude of defense. If once the great puma launched forth in his spring, no power on earth could save the young ram. It seemed as if Spot were to lose his heritage already.

Broken Fang knew this crag. He had made a kill of one of its little people a day or two before. He had always had only scorn for these lesser folk,—the scurrying gophers, the timid rabbits, and the furry pikas in the rocks. Yet at that instant he was to receive a taste of their might. A shrill shriek suddenly split open the silence,—just in front of his head.

After all it was only a miniature sound, really little more than a high-pitched squeak. Yet in that unfathomable silence it cracked like a rifle. In one second of thought Broken Fang would have identified the sound, would have kept his poise, and a moment later would have sprung with fatal power into the flock of sheep. Yet that second of thought did not come in time. The impulse to his muscles, the sudden explosion