Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/45

 with a sharp metallic sound. Next moment Eyes o' Flame was gone.

Norman watched him fade into the gloom, then glanced again at the little tailless coon, draggled and tousled, lying in the bottom of the boat, his wet fur flecked with blood where sharp claws had pierced his neck so deeply that Norman had not found it easy to withdraw them. Lotor the Lucky had not moved. He lay as limp and still as when he had first been lifted from the water. Though he still breathed, his eyes were closed. Norman shook his head.

He was sorry. For years he had known the old bobtailed raccoon, and often he had studied the record of Lotor's wanderings, recognizing his trail by the four missing toes and the crushed heel which caused the little coon to limp. Norman knew that he would not find that trail again in the wet paths through the rush-grown meadows or along the margins of the marsh plains. The luck of Lotor the Lucky—luck which was really the reward of wisdom—had failed at last.

At the landing, Norman laid down his paddle and, stepping forward past the coon, took a turn of the bowline around a post. The boat's momentum carried it forward a few feet so that it swung broadside against the bank where myrtle bushes formed thickets here and there and live-oak limbs overhung