Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/242

234 of his tightly drawn nerves had the speed of light itself.

It was only a little pika—a rock rabbit, as the mountaineers call them,—such as the puma had killed the day before. It would have been surpassing poetic justice for it to have been the mate of the small, gray creature that had died so recently in his talons, squealing for the mother of his litter to come back to him. And his sharp squeal was just enough, and no more, to put high explosives under the sheep hunt.

The cougar's nerves had been pitched to the highest key, and the muscular reaction to that shrill sound could not be restrained. His paw lashed out: the little rodent leaped from beneath it. And at the same instant he snarled.

Few living creatures can strike in silence. One of them is the mighty elephant, most intellectual and, of course, majestic of all the beasts. This jungle king can lunge out with a resistless force and still keep the tremendous silence of the sphinx. But the stallion screams when he strikes with his lashing hoofs. The elk bellows, and even the venerable, dignified old bear has a savage growl at his lips as he slashes his terrible paws at his foe. The pent-up passions do not find sufficient escape in the blow itself, and a vocal utterance usually accompanies it. As Broken Fang struck at the rodent, his short, terrible snarl rang through the still air.

The sheep needed no further warning. They