Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/92

74 That does n't mean timidity. Timidity is a trait of the deer, a gift of nature for self-preservation, and no one holds it against them. In fact, it makes them rather appealing. Cowardice is a lack of moral courage to remain and fight when nature has afforded the necessary weapons to fight with. It is sort of a betrayal of nature,—a misuse of powers. No one calls a rabbit a coward because it runs away. A warlike rabbit is something that no man has ever seen since the beginning of the world, and probably never will. Nature has n't given the little animal any weapons.

But this is not true of the wolf or cougar. A wolf has ninety pounds of lightning-quick muscles, and teeth that are nothing but a set of very well-sharpened and perfectly arranged daggers. A cougar not only has fangs, but talons that can rend flesh more terribly than the cogs of a machine, and strength to make the air hum under his paw as he strikes it down. And so it is an extremely disappointing thing to see either of these animals flee in terror from an Airedale not half their size,—a sight that most mountain men see rather often. The fact that they act with greater courage in the famine times, and that either of them will fight to the very death when brought to bay, are not extenuating circumstances to their cowardice. A