Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/56

 while his red coat grew so long and shaggy that his late owner, back at the clearing on the Ottanoonsis, would never have recognized him. The return of spring found him emaciated but vigorous, and with a fierce appetite for the long, brown, withered grass of open swales and for the succulent roots of the sweet-flag and bulrush along the edges of the lake. He was heartily sick of birch-twigs. When the trees began to film with green beneath the sun and showers of May, the big bull wandered off; and the Red Calf and his mother (she had failed through some mischance, to produce a new calf that season) found themselves once more alone together beside their lonely lake.

The summer passed rather uneventfully, and by autumn Red Calf was a sturdy and agile young bull, armed with a pair of horns which were short but exceedingly sharp. Pugnacious of disposition, but with no foe to vent his pugnacity upon, he was forever butting at dead stumps and testing those new horns of his by goring and tossing the tangled bush. His mother, still devoted as ever, would watch with mild amazement these exuberant antics, so unlike what those of her own calf would have been.

When the mating moon of October began again to stir new fire in the cow's veins, Red Calf got his first chance to put his untried prowess to the test. One evening just after moonrise, before the