Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/32

24 immediately handle. He knew just how to look twice into a cluster of leaves and twigs before he lighted among them—lest a certain little brown-furred cutthroat that was rather unpleasantly known to his family should be waiting in ambush. He knew how to select a nest-site out of the reach of a prowling raccoon, and he was as impertinent and saucy from all this knowledge as words can tell. Yet out of a perfectly clear ground, so to speak (it wouldn't be correct to say out of a clear sky when referring to one who habitually lives in the sky) two utterly unknown and enormous living creatures had revealed themselves.

The camp-robber had been winging back and forth through the forest and had flitted down to the spring for a bath. One of the two figures was standing erect, shaking his fist at the speeding form of Spread Horn,—a creature from the back of which the camp-robber had almost, if not quite, gathered vermin. The other was lying down, gazing moodily at an interesting-looking object that had oozed what had seemed to be dark blood on the pine needles. In form they resembled bears; yet he didn't for an instant think that they were. They were not deer or cougar or even overgrown raccoons. He perched upon the limb to think it over.

Yet the camp-robber never spends a great deal of time in such a profitless occupation as thought. At once his instincts began to get busy