Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/187

 cane thicket, intending to stop and cook his breakfast in the woods just ahead where no rushes or wild pea vines cumbered the ground. On the prairie a group of ten deer, feeding in tall grass close to the forest edge, scattered suddenly in all directions. Burliegh craned his neck and saw a sinuous movement in the grass as though a huge snake were winding through it.

It was a young puma, he concluded, young and small; or else an old and very wily one, wily enough to crouch low as it made its way through the grass and thus keep its body hidden. After a minute, he swore softly. Proud of his woodcraft, he permitted himself no excuses. The serpentine weaving of the grass had ceased at the edge of a small circular opening around a sink hole, and across this opening had passed four black wolves of the small Low Country breed, one trotting behind the other.

Burliegh stared moodily at the spot where they had reëntered the grass, frowning over his mistake as though some misfortune had befallen him. Suddenly his expression changed. Rising in his stirrups and pushing back his wide-brimmed hat, he gazed for a long minute at a dark object far down the prairie, a bow shot from the edge of the woods.

A troop of whitetails intercepted his view and he rode on a dozen yards, then halted to examine the