Williams news., 1921-06-17
CHAPTER I-contInued.

| For when all thiugS are said and
 done, there were few bigger towards
 in the whole wilderness world than | Whisperfoot. A good many people
 think that Graycoat the coyote | could take lessons from him in this
 respect. But others, knowing how a
 hunter is brought in occasionally with | almost all human resemblance gone
 from him because a cougar charged in | his death agony, think this Is unfair | to the larger animal. And it is true that a full-grown cougar will some
 times attack horned cattle, something
 that no American animal cares to do
 unless he wants a good fight on his
 paws and of which the very thought
 would throw Graycoat into a spasm i;
 and there have been even stranger
 stories, if one could quite believe
 them. A certain measure of respect
 must be extended to any animal that
 will hunt the great bull elk for to
 miss the stroke and get caught be-
 meath the churning, flashing, slashing,
 razor-edged front hoofs Is simply
 death, painful and without delay. But
 the difficulty lies in the fact that these
 things are not done in the ordinary,
 rational blood of hunting. What an
 animal does in its death agony, or to protect it's young, what great game it follows in the starving times of win ter, can be put to neither its debit nor it's credit. A coyote will charge when mad. A raccoon will put up wicked fight when cornered. A hen will peck at the hand that robs her nest. When hunting was fairly good, Whisperfoot avoided the elk and steer almost punctiliously as he avoided men, which is saying very much in deed; and any kind of terrier could usually drive him straight up tree.
 But he did like to pretend to be very great and terrible among the smaller forest creatures. And he was Fear itself to the deer. A human hunter who would kill two deer a week for f1fty-two weeks would be called a much uglier name than poach- CT; but yet this had been Whisper foot's record, on and of, ever since his second year. Many a great buck wore the scar of the full stroke-aft- CT which Whisperfoot had lost his hold. Many a fawn had crouched panting with terror in the thfckets at just a tawny light on the gnarled limb of a pine. Many a doe would grow great-eyed and terrified at just his strange, pungent smell on the wind.
 He yawned again, and his fangs | looked white and abnormally large in | the moonlight. His great, green eyes | were still clouded and languorous | from sleep Then he began to steal | up the ridge toward his hunting | grounds. It was a curious thing that | he walked straight in the face of the l soft wind that came down from the | snow fields, and yet there wasn't a weathercock to be seen anywhere. And | neither had the chipmunk seen him wet a paw and hold it up, after the approved fashion of holding up a fin ger. He had a better way of knowing "a chill at the end of his whfskers.
 The little, breathless night sounds h the brush around him seemed to madden him. They made a song to aim, strange, wild melody that even such frontiersmen as Dan and Len lox could not experience. A thousand smells brushed down to him on the wind, more potent than any wine or ust. He began to tremble all over with rapture and excitement. But un- Ike Cranston's trembling, no wilder | ress ear was keen enough to hear the ! enves rustling beneath him.