Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/207

 yards down the wind two gray foxes, hunting together, halted abruptly at that strange, sudden commotion, listened eagerly and wonderingly, then trotted forward, sniffing the air. From behind a fringe of low canes they surveyed the situation. Then in some subtle, soundless way known only to foxes, they agreed upon the strategy which the problem demanded.

The male trotted boldly forward, heading straight for the spot where the eagle stood upon the turkey's body. The female circled to the left and approached the eagle from that side. Two minutes later the big bird, his hooked bill full of turkey feathers, saw two foxes—not rusty-red like those of the mountains, but gray with white and russet markings—leaping toward him with bared fangs. One fox he might have defied, but with one assailant in his front and another at his flank the odds were too heavy. With a scream of anger he rose and, circling upward, left his prey to the wily schemers of the swamp woods who had schemed their way to a feast.

One taste of juicy flesh, torn from the breast of his victim just before the foxes had appeared, served only to sharpen his hunger. As he spiraled upward above the woods his eyes searched the tree-tops and the sky and swept the distant level horizon. To the eagle of the Smokies, all that they saw was