Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/71

 his quarry, was overhauling the fugitive almost as though the latter were standing still.

A half minute more and Cloud King's head reached downward, his fierce eyes measuring the distance. Again he screamed and again the great yellow feet with their armament of trenchant claws opened and shut beneath him. Then, his wings half closed, his talons spread, his barred tail open like a fan, he shot down upon his victim.

Dan Alexander, flat on his stomach behind a low mossy bowlder near the center of Rocky Meadow, heard that scream faintly, but was too busy to glance upward. He had completed his long stalk at last; and now, for the second time in his life, he was looking at Red Rogue, the fox, along the barrel of a rifle. Dan was supremely content. He had given much time and labor to this bit of still-hunting and had crawled painfully across half the width of Rocky Meadow. But he had not taken all this trouble in vain. Red Rogue, still sitting on his haunches beside the big bowlder near the brook, was an easy target. Dan, squinting along his rifle barrel, was debating whether to aim for the middle of that rusty-red back—in which case he could not miss—or risk a fancy shot at the fox's head.

Red Rogue also heard the peregrine's scream; and