Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/127

 Meanwhile the bull-bat came on apace, soaring over the hills on swift, silent wings.

A gaudy moth sailed out of the shadows beyond a tall, trembleleaf cottonwood. The brown bat spied it, and immediately gave chase.

In and out, back and forth, through the grove and across the ridges with lightning speed, went pursuer and pursued. Grim determination drove the wings of both, one to kill and the other to escape destruction: a race typical of wild life. Nature's inscrutable law of survival: one life to preserve another.

All too soon, the bull-bat arrived to make of the race a three-cornered chase, with one pursuing and two trying to escape. Bent on colliding with the brown bat to crush the delicate framework of her wing-hands, and bring her absolutely helpless to the ground, he closed in behind the twain. Just one slender bone fractured, and the bat's pinion would be useless, so finely adjusted was its equilibrium.

But the cruel night-hawk was not to have his way unmolested. The route led past a thick-foliaged box-elder tree, wherein sat that mighty king of darkness, the gray owl. He espied the swaying bull-bat as he passed through a shaft of moonlight, and without hesitation lunged heavily out of his place of concealment to bring up the rear of what had now become a four-cornered race of death.

The brown bat overtook the panic-stricken moth and neatly scooped it into her tail sac. Turning to flit back to her favorite region by the rock quarry, she saw her feathered foes for the first time. She saw the gray owl come up with the bull-bat, heard his raucous squawk of fear, heard the owl's cry of triumph, and watched the pair go down together into a wild-plum thicket amid a terrific clash of rending bones and fluttering feathers.

The shrieking voices arising out of the bushes told of a battle unto death by two of night's fiercest nomads.

But the frightened mammal did not await the outcome. Too anxious was she to get home with her restless babies, who seemed to sense the danger and were now beginning to wriggle peevishly. So large and strong had they grown that it was quite a problem to navigate the air currents with them when they hung quietly. When they persisted in moving about, which they did at times, they would literally trip her up, causing her to stagger drunkenly and strive mightily to maintain her balance.

passed, the feeding and carrying of the young bats became more problematic. The mother realized she could not support her own weight and the increasing weight of her family much longer. As the youngsters grew in size and strength, they required more nourishment. And, to complete the cycle, they hampered her wing functioning to such an extent that food was increasingly harder to procure. They were no longer sucklings entirely, but depended a great deal upon such insects as the mother could catch for them. She often sacrificed her own stomach to satisfy their voracious appetites, thus weakening herself and thereby reducing her ability to snare sufficient insect food.

She struggled desperately, bravely, slowly reaching the stage where it would be impossible to go on, where starvation faced the whole family. A tragic ending was in sight for the five little night-lovers if nature did not soon intervene.

Then, one night as the brown mother essayed to fly out of her hiding place, she fell clumsily to the bare rocks on the quarry floor, where she lay flat on her back for several