Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/254

 He awoke, but he did mot move. For two minutes, perhaps, he lay motionless as a log. Then from the reeds fifteen feet above him came a snort, followed by the sound of deers' hoofs hitting the sun-baked clay. Swiftly but noiselessly the leviathan form of the king of the river slid into the wine-brown water and vanished.

Five minutes after the great gator's disappearance, Sandy Jim Mayfield reached the point on the slope of the causeway for which he had been heading and saw what he had expected to see. Working his way on foot through the reeds, he had heard the snort of the flat-horned buck as the wily creature winded him and gave warning to the does; and, knowing the river king's reputation for wariness and wisdom, he considered it almost certain that the big saurian also had heard that snort and had interpreted it correctly. Hence, though he still pushed on slowly and cautiously toward the spot from which he had hoped to shoot the river king, he felt that his caution was wasted. The other gators which he had seen when he climbed the live oak might still be basking on the sunny slope, but he would not find the monster whose life he had sworn to take.

The old woodsman smiled as Ke crouched in the cover of the reeds, slowly drawing a bead on the larger of the two saurians still dozing on the mud. He was disappointed, yet pleased. This king of the