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 pointing upward toward the lofty limb where the gobbler had been perching.

He was too late by a fraction of a second. At the first flurry of the wood ducks' pinions, the gobbler had launched himself from his perch. Chad caught one glimpse of a great wide-winged shape sailing swiftly away amid the tree-tops. Then he lowered his eyes to see Ringtail the fox standing on the creek-bank gazing at him calmly, a male wood duck hanging from his jaws.

For perhaps five seconds the boy and the fox stared at each other without moving. Then, with a sudden swing of his body, Chad leveled his gun. He had watched the woods' drama through to its end; it was now time for action. Ringtail had cost him a fine gobbler. Moreover, wood ducks were favorites of his, and he had learned with angry surprise that among their many enemies was numbered at least one fox.

Chad had never known a fox to prey on wood ducks before; but evidently old Ringtail knew how to catch them, without even getting his feet wet, by stalking them along this narrow woods' creek and pouncing on them when they came out on the sandy margin below the bank. It was time to end the career of this murderer of precious wild fowl and costly thoroughbred hens.

Quickly as these thoughts flashed through the