Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/229

 He knew also that the woods' folk as a rule have short memories and that it is movement which attracts and holds their attention. After he had remained for a little while motionless and silent in his ambush, he would be forgotten by some, ignored by others of the lesser forest creatures; and while most of the larger woods' dwellers moved about mainly at night, there was always a chance that some venturesome or unusually hungry prowler would pass nearby.

For a while he saw and heard only the smaller people of the woods—inquisitive ruby-crowned kinglets scolding peevishly and peering at him with round, beady, little eyes; acrobatic tufted tits swinging head downward amid the higher branches; blue-gray, white-breasted nuthatches traveling up and down the tree trunks like deliberate feathered mice and talking incessantly to one another in nasal, unvarying tones. Soon, however, a big, white-nosed, iron-gray fox squirrel showed himself near the top of a pine; and presently, from a small, steep-sided stream which wound through the wood fifty feet in front of his ambush, came a subdued splash which told the boy that some large bird or mammal had moved in the water. He wondered whether another otter had taken up its abode in the Otter Woods, and for some minutes he considered the advisability of creeping forward cautiously to a point whence