Wisdom of the Wilderness/The Little Homeless One
THE icy rain of a belated Northern spring drove down steadily through the dark branches of the fir thicket, and the litter of young "snowshoe rabbits," shivering beneath the insufficient shelter, huddled themselves together, for warmth, into a reddish-brown ball of the same color as the dead fir needles which formed their bed. Their long-eared mother, after nursing them all through the harsh daylight and shielding them as best she could with her furry body, had slipped away to forage for her evening meal under cover of the gathering dusk, leaving her litter, perforce, to the chances of the wild.
Concealment being their only defense against their many prowling and hungry foes, the compact cluster of long-eared babies made no tiniest whimper of protest against their discomfort, lest the sound should betray them to some hunting fox or weasel. Had they kept still, as they should have done, they would have been invisible to the keenest passing eye; but just for the moment the cluster was convulsed by a silent struggle. One of the litter, chancing to have been left on the outer surface of the bunch, came to the conclusion that he would be more comfortable at the center, and set himself to force his way in. Being the biggest and strongest of the litter he presently succeeded, in spite of the resistance of his weaker brothers and sisters. And so, since he was the one least in need of warmth, he managed to get the most of it. For it is written in the Law of the Wilderness that to him that hath shall be given.
Fortunately for the defenseless litter no hungry prowler came by during the commotion, and the struggle was soon over. The ousted ones resigned themselves to the inevitable and settled themselves quietly on the cold exterior of the bunch. Some fifteen or twenty minutes later the mother returned, well stuffed with sprouting grasses and the aromatic leaf buds of the birch saplings. Through the gathering dark and the rain she came hopping in soundlessly on her broad furry pads. She slipped under the low-hanging branches of the thicket, curled herself about the shivering cluster of her little ones, and drew them close against her warm, wet body, where at once they fell to nursing greedily.
Soon the whole litter was sound asleep, so well warmed by their mother's abundant milk that the bitter rain lashing down upon them through the branches disturbed them not at all. The night was black and full of strange, subdued noises, the swish of sudden rain gusts, the occasional scraping of great branches against each other, and always, high overhead the sealike rush and muffled roar of the wind in the straining tops of the firs and hemlocks. While the little ones slept soundly, careless of the storm and unconscious of all danger, the mother's sleep was hardly sleep at all. While her eyes closed drowsily in the darkness, some portion of her senses was always on the alert, always standing sentry, ready to arouse her to instant and complete wakefulness. Her ears, attuned to catch the faintest doubtful sound, were never asleep, never quite at rest; her sensitive nostrils were always quiveringly attentive. If a twig snapped and was blown to earth her eyes opened wide at once, and both ears stood up in anxious interrogation. Once, through the hushed tumult, those vigilant ears caught a sound of light feet stealing past the edge of the thicket. Instantly they stiffened to a rigid stillness, as if frozen. But the menacing sound—so faint that few ears save hers could have detected it—passed on. The rigid ears relaxed; the round, bulging, anxious eyes of the furry mother closed again.
That night of rain and cold few of the hungry hunting beasts were on the prowl, and no further peril came near the shelterless family in the fir thicket. But had a fox or a weasel chanced upon them, the timorous mother would have been no protection to her young. With no defense against her swarming foes except her obscure coloring and her speed in flight, she would have had to choose between staying to die with the helpless litter or leaving them to their fate and escaping, if she could, to bear another litter in their place. And there is no doubt as to which course she would have chosen. She loved her young ones; but she loved life better. She had but one life; and she had had, and with luck could go on having, many young. She would have run away, careering with mighty bounds through the stormy darkness to hide at last, with pounding heart and panting lungs in some other thicket.
And the nurslings would have made a succulent meal for the lucky prowler.
Fortunately, however, for this little story, the timorous mother was not to be faced by any such harsh alternative. For in this particular litter of hers, as we have seen, there was one youngster so much stronger than his fellows as to have been singled out, apparently, for the special favor of the Unseen Powers of the Wilderness. To him fell more than his due share of the family warmth, the family nourishment, to the end that he should grow up a peculiarly fine, vigorous, and prepotent specimen of his race, and reproduce himself abundantly, to the advantage, not only of the whole tribe of the snowshoe rabbits, but of all the hunting beasts and birds of the wilderness, who chiefly depend upon that prolific and defenseless tribe for their prey. Hence it came about that, though death in many furred and feathered forms prowled about them or hovered over them by night and by day, this particular mother and her young escaped discovery. No dreadful, peering eyes chanced to penetrate their screen of drooping fir branches. And the mother, on her perilous foragings in the twilight or the rose-grey dawn, was never pounced upon or trailed. For that one sturdy youngling's sake, it would seem, the spirits of the wild had decreed it so.
Presently, the harsh season relented. The rain ceased except for an occasional warm, vitalizing shower; the wilderness was steeped in caressing sunshine; the leaf buds of the birch and poplar burst into a flood of tenderest green; and in every open glade the Painted Trillium unfolded its fairy blooms of white and carmine. Spring, in haste to make up for lost time, rushed forward glowing to meet the summer. The litter of young "snowshoes" had been, for a week or more, browsing upon the tender herbage on the skirts of the thicket, and depending daily less and less upon their mother's milk for their subsistence. Suddenly, on one of those rich days, warm yet tonic, when life runs sweetly in the veins of all the wilderness, the hitherto devoted mother looked coldly on her young and refused them her breasts. Her biggest and most favored son, unused to rebuffs, persisted obstinately. She fetched him a kick from her powerful hinder paws which sent him rolling over and over on the brown carpet of fir needles, whisked about impatiently, and went hopping off through the bushes to seek other interests and make ready to rear another family. The kicked one, recovering from his astonishment, scratched the needles from his ears with his hind paws, stared indignantly at his brothers and sisters as if he thought that they had done it, and hopped away, in the opposite direction to that which his unsympathetic mother had taken. He browsed upon the young grasses till his appetite was satisfied, then took cover beneath a thick low juniper bush and settled himself to sleep, his independent spirit refusing to be daunted by the unaccustomed loneliness. The rest of the litter, less venturesome, peered forth timorously from the edge of their shelter, nibbled the herbage that was within easy reach, and finally huddled down together, for comfort, on the old nest. That same night, while they slept in a furry bunch, a weasel came that way and took it into his triangular head to explore the thicket. He was not hungry, but after the manner of his bloodthirsty tribe he loved killing for its own sake—which most of the other hunting folk of the wilderness do not. He savagely dispatched the whole litter, drank the blood of a couple, devoured the brains of another, tossed the mangled carcases wantonly about, and left them to the next prowler that might come by. A few minutes later a big "fisher" arrived, maliciously pursuing the weasel's trail, and did not disdain the easy repast that had been left for him.
During the sunlit, spring-scented weeks that followed, while the young snowshoe rabbit was growing swiftly to maturity, the favor of the Fates continued to shield him. If a prowling fox chanced to peer, sniffing hungrily, beneath the bush which formed his bivouac (for he knew no home, no specially preferred abiding place), it always happened that some caprice, perhaps some dim premonition of peril, would arouse him from his half slumber and send him off noiselessly through the shadows a few moments before the arrival of the foe, who would be left to smell angrily at the still warm couch. If, as he hopped buoyantly across some moonlit glade, the terrible horned owl, that scourge of the wilderness night, dropped down on him on soundless wings, it always happened that some great branch would magically interpose itself, just in time, and the clutching talons would be diverted from their aim. Such experiences—and they were many—served only to sharpen his vigilance and drive home upon his narrow brain the lesson, more vital to a snowshoe rabbit than all others put together, that destruction lay in wait for him every hour.
Thus well schooled by that rough but most efficient teacher, the wilderness, and well nourished by the abundance of the growing season, young Snowshoe came swiftly to his full stature. Though universally called a rabbit, and, more definitely, a "snowshoe" rabbit by reason of his great, spreading, furry feet, he was in reality a true hare, larger than the rabbits, much longer and more powerful in the hind legs, incomparably swifter in flight, but quite incapable of making himself a home by burrowing in the earth. He was of the tribe of the homeless ones, who knew no shelters but the overhanging branches of bush or thicket, no snug lairs in which to hide from storm or cold, no nests save such dead leafage as they might find to crouch upon. In color he was of a rusty reddish brown above and pure white underneath, and he had the long, alert ears, narrow skull, and protruding, guileless eyes of all the hare family.
And now the Unseen Powers, taking stock of their favorite, perceived that he was bigger, stronger, fleeter, and more alert in all his senses, than any other buck snowshoe in the whole wide basin of the Ottanoonsis Stream. Thereupon they decided to leave him to his own resources. And straightway life grew even more eventful for him than it had been hitherto.
It was high summer in the Ottanoonsis Valley. The air, hot but wholesome, and sweet with faint, wild smells of moss and balsam fir and juniper, breathed softly through the dense, dark patches of evergreens, and rustled lightly among the birches and poplars which clothed the tumbled rocky ridges. The river, shrunken in its channel, here brawled musically over its shallow rapids, there widened out into still reaches where the great black moose would wade belly-deep as they fed upon the roots of the water lilies. Here and there a fract of dark cedar swamps gave shelter to the bears. The Valley, an epitome of the wilderness, was the congenial home of foxes, lynxes, fishers, minks, weasels, skunks, and porcupines; and every single one of these, the blameless vegetarian porcupine excepted, was a tireless and implacable hunter of the snowshoe rabbits. Moreover, in the deeper recesses of the fir and hemlock woods several pairs of the murderous giant-horned owls had their retreats; and in the high ravines of the hills that rimmed the valley were the nests of the white-headed eagles and of the great, blue goshawks, those swiftest and most relentless of all the marauders of the air, who also looked upon the long-eared tribe as their most natural prey and easiest quarry. It would seem that, in the game of life as played in the Ottanoonsis Valley, the dice were heavily loaded against the Homeless One.
It was a sultry, drowsy afternoon, and the Homeless One, crouched beneath a thick juniper bush, was more nearly asleep than was at all usual with him. Indeed, it was the safest time of the day, when most of the hunting beasts were apt to be curled up in their lairs, when the giant owl slumbered in the depths of the hemlock glooms, when few enemies were abroad except the soaring eagles and the long-winged, tireless goshawks. But it is the exceptions rather than the rules which make the life of the wilderness exciting. Just as young Snowshoe, who had browsed comfortly, was in his deepest drowse, his quivering nostrils, which never slept, signalled to his brain—"Death!" In that same lightning fraction of a second all his powers were wide awake, and, resting as he did in the position of a coiled spring, he shot into the air through the thin fringes of his shelter just as the slender, yellow shape of a hungry weasel alighted on the spot where he had been lying. His great furry hind paws, as they left the ground, just brushed the weasel's pointed nose.
The weasel's narrow mouth opened in a snarl of savage disappointment. Never before, in all his sanguinary experience of snowshoe rabbits, had he missed what seemed to him so sure and easy a kill. But it was not in the weasel nature to be discouraged, as one of the cat tribe might have been, by the failure of his first spring. Though his intended victim was already many feet away, lengthening out in great bounds which propelled him through the bushes at an amazing pace, the weasel darted after him confidently, trusting to his endurance and tenacity of purpose to win in the end against his quarry's greater speed. In a few seconds the fugitive was lost to sight among the leafage, but the relentless pursuer followed the trail by scent for several hundred yards. Then, because he knew it was the habit of the snowshoe tribe to circle back so as to regain the familiar feeding grounds and coverts, this craftiest of hunters left the trail and cut a chord to the circle, expecting to intercept his quarry's flight. Had he been dealing with an ordinary, average snowshoe, things would have fallen out something after this fashion. He would have shown himself suddenly right in the fugitive's path and jumped at him with a terrifying snarl. The fugitive, panic-stricken to find himself thus confronted by the foe whom he had thought left far behind, would have cowered down trembling in his tracks and yielded up his life with a scream of anguish.
But in this case the weasel found his calculations all astray. This quarry's flight was so unexpectedly swift that the pursuer reached the point of interception too late to lie in ambush. He arrived just as young Snowshoe came by with a wild rush. He sprang, of course, but from too great a distance for his spring to be effective. Snowshoe, catching sight of him just in time, was not panic-stricken, but, without swerving from his course, went clean over him in one tremendous bound, and at the same time, as luck would have it, fetched him a convulsive kick on the side of the head with one powerful hind paw as he passed. The weasel went sprawling, with a startled squeak. And the fugitive, tearing on, had vanished before he could recover himself. Refusing to be discouraged, however, and blazing with fury at his discomfiture, he settled himself down again doggedly to the pursuit. He had now a more just appreciation of his quarry's pace and powers; so he drew a longer chord to the circle, determined that this time he would get well ahead and make certain of his prey.
But unforunately for his enemy's designs, the Homeless One was no slave to the traditions of his tribe. He was now thoroughly frightened. He changed his mind about running in a circle. He lost all desire to get back to his familiar haunts. Untiring and swift he kept straight on; and the weasel, after waiting in vain for many minutes at the point where, by all the rules of rabbit hunting, the prey should have been intercepted and pulled down, gave up the chase in disgust and fell furiously to hunting wood mice. But his brain retained a vindictive memory of the great snowshoe who had so outwitted him.
The Homeless One, meanwhile, had reached a part of the valley which wore a novel air to him. This section had been chopped over by the lumbermen some seven or eight years before, and cleared of nearly all of the heavy timber. There were few trees of any size; and most of the ground was covered with dense thickets of birch, poplar, Indian pear, wild cherry, and mountain ash, with here and there a patch of young balsam firs, darkly but richly green and giving forth an aromatic perfume in the heat. All the thickets were traversed by the runways of the snowshoe rabbits—narrow, well-trodden trails frequented by all the tribe.
The Homeless One, by this time, had got over his fright. Having a conveniently short memory, he had forgotten why he was frightened. And also, which was altogether unusual, he had forgotten the haunts of his past life, a mile or so away. A sleek young doe met him in the runway, and waved long ears of admiration at his comely stature and length of limb. He stopped to touch noses and exchange compliments with her. Coyly she hopped away, leading him into a cool, green-shadowed covert of sumach scrub.
The Homeless One was well content with his new feeding grounds. The strange does all received him with frank approval. He found the bucks, to be sure, by no means so friendly; but this was of small concern to him. If any of them tried to drive him away he bowled them over with a careless rush, or treated them to a scornful kick, of such vigor as to bring them promptly to their manners. Being a philosophic folk they accepted his society forthwith and forgot that he was a stranger and an interloper.
As was the custom of the snowshoe tribe, the Homeless One was in the habit of passing most of the hours of full daylight crouched in a half doze in some dim covert. When hungry, or in the mood for diversion, he would slip forth, after assuring himself that there was no danger in the air, and either go leaping along the runways in playful pursuit of his acquaintances or fall to browsing upon the wild grasses and tender herbage.
One afternoon as he was hopping lazily after a pair of does who were merely pretending, by way of sport, to evade him, he was amazed and startled by the sight of a big goshawk shuffling at an awkward gait along the runway behind him. The runway was narrow, and densely overarched by low branches, so it was impossible that the great hawk could have seen him from the tipper air. Obviously, the enterprising bird had entered the runway at its outlet on a little glade some forty or fifty yards back; and here he was now foolishly undertaking to hunt the fleet snowshoes on their own domain.
The first impulse of the Homeless One, naturally, was flight. He knew that terrible long-winged hawk, swiftest and most valiant of all the marauders of the air. With one bound he cleared the two does and raced on for a score of yards. Then curiosity overcame his fear. He stopped short and turned to stare at his pursuer; and the frightened does, blundering against him as they fled past, nearly knocked him over.
Paying no attention to the does he sat up on his hind quarters, ears erect and eyes bulging, and watched the hawk's approach with mingled wonder and contempt. The beautiful, fierceeyed bird was not at home upon the level earth. His deadly talons were not made for walking, but for perching and for slaying. His realm was the free spaces of the air, and here in the runway he could not spread his wings. His progress was so slow, laborious, and clumsy that, but for the glare of his level, piercing eyes he would have seemed grotesque. The Homeless One, deeply puzzled, kept hopping away along the runway as the clumsy bird approached, preserving a safe distance of ten or a dozen yards, and ready to make an instantaneous dart into the underbrush on either side if the enemy should show the slightest sign of rising into the air. The two does, meanwhile, reassured by their companion's boldness, had ventured back to peer at the strange intruder from farther up the runway.
Apparently undiscouraged by his failure to overtake the mocking fugitives, the great hawk shuffled steadily on, the three rabbits giving way rather contemptuously and at their leisure before him. This went on for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, till the runway came to an end in a patch of grassy open. As the foremost of the two does hopped forth into the sunlight there came a rush of wings overhead and a bright form, sweeping from just above the green birch-tops, struck her down. Her scream of terror was strangled in her throat as the talons of a second hawk, larger and more powerful than the first, clutched her life out in an instant. The other doe and the Homeless One, horrified out of their complacence, shot off in opposite directions through the densest of the underbrush. And the victor, standing erect and trim with one foot upon her still quivering prey, stared about her with hard, bright eyes like jewels, waiting for her mate, who had so cleverly driven the runway for her, to emerge from the shadows and join her in the feast.
After this adventure the Homeless One, who was gifted beyond his fellows with the power of learning from experience, was always a little suspicious of the tribal runways. He used them, for his convenience and for his amusement, as much as ever, but he had gained a dim notion of the advantages which they offered to his enemies. One evening, on the violet edge of dusk, when he was gambolling with another buck and several frisky does, a red fox came racing down the runway without making any attempt to disguise his approach. Swift as he was the swifter snowshoes easily outstripped him as they fled from his terrifying attack. Toward the other end of the runway they darted pell-mell, to be met by another fox, who, leaping among them and slashing from side to side with his long white fangs, brought down two of the panic-stricken fugitives before they could scatter across the open, while the original pursuer was able to seize a third in the momentary confusion. But the Homeless One was not there. At the first appearance of the red-furred enemy he had darted aside from the runway and slipped off like a ghost through the gloom of the underbrush. He was not badly frightened, so he only ran a dozen yards or so. Then he stopped and complacently fell to browsing, quite careless as to the fate of his companions. A snowshoe rabbit has enough to think of in guarding his own skin, and it had never occurred to him to try and warn his fellows of the trap they were running into.
It was through such experiences, such hairbreadth adventures and escapes, that the Homeless One, always in hourly peril of his life but not without distractions and joys of his own to make that life sweet to him, saw the hot, bright summer pass into the crisp, exhilarating autumn, with its glories of scarlet on the maple leaves, dull crimson on the sumachs, aerial gold on the birches and poplars, and vivid, waxy vermilion on the heavy fruit clusters of the mountain ash trees overhanging the amber eddies of the Ottanoonsis Stream. The patches of barren, clothed only with a bushy scrub not more than a foot and a half in height, were tinged to a rich cobalt by the crowded masses of the blueberries. These luscious berries gave the snowshoes a pleasant variation to their diet, and the matted scrub was traversed abundantly by their runways. The black bears of the Ottanoonsis, also, would come to these blueberry patches and squat upon their plump haunches to feast greedily on the juicy harvest. The Homeless One, rejoicing in his swiftness of foot, regarded these huge, black, cunning-eyed beasts with scorn, because they were so slow and lumbering in their movements. One day he saw a bear apparently asleep, its rusty black snout all purple-streaked with the juices of the berries it had been devouring. Yes, it was clear the bear was sleeping soundly, well stuffed with food and well content with the warm sun. The Homeless One had never before enjoyed such a chance to examine a bear at close quarters. It almost looked to him as if that bear was dead. A shrewd blue jay in a neighboring bush shrieked a note of warning. It was ignored. The Homeless One hopped closer and closer, investigating the monster with eyes and nose alike intensely interested. All at once, a huge, black paw, armed with mighty claws, swept down upon him with the speed of a trained boxer's fist. But the Homeless One was no such fool as the blue jay had taken him to be. When that murderous paw descended he was no longer just there but some seven or eight feet away and waving his long ears innocently. The bear, trying to look unconcerned, fell to munching blueberries again; and the Homeless One hopped off with his curiosity quite satisfied.
It was not until November came, with its biting sleet showers, its snows that fell, rested a few days, and vanished, its spells of sharp frost and sudden, bone-reaching cold, that the Homeless One began really to suffer the penalties of his inherited incapacity to make or find himself a home. The comfortable leafage had fallen from all the trees and bushes except the evergreens, the firs and pines, hemlocks and cedars. It was dreary work to crouch beneath a dripping bush while the icy winds scourged the high valley of the Ottanoonsis. Nevertheless, he kept heart to play with his furry companions; and life grew more eventful day by day as his enemies grew more and more hungry and persistent in their hunting. It was about this time, when the snow began to linger upon 'the ground in glaring patches, that his coat began to change in color in order to make him less conspicuous. He was moulting his rusty-colored summer fur, and the new fur, as it came in, was pure white. By the time the snow had come to stay for the winter his clean, new, snowy coat was in readiness to match it, so that when he crouched motionless, his ears laid back and his nose between his paws, the keenest and hungriest of eyes would usually fail to distinguish him.
One windless, biting afternoon about sunset, when the shadows were stretching long and blue across the snow, the Homeless One was just stirring from his chilly couch to go and feed when from behind his sheltering bush a lean weasel darted upon him. Thanks to his amazing alertness—and his luck—he shot aside in time. But just in time. It was the narrowest shave he had ever had; and he left a tantalizing mouthful of fur in the weasel's jaws.
As it happened, this was the same big weasel, swift and cunning, whom he had balked so ignominiously in the early part of the summer; and by some freak of chance the incident—and possibly some peculiarity in the scent of this huge snowshoe—now revived in the weasel's memory, and he took up the pursuit with a special fury. The snow lay thin and hard, so that the Homeless One was deprived of the advantage which his wide, furry feet would have given him had the snow been soft and deep. To make matters worse he was feeling slack and tired that day, and so fell short of his accustomed speed. As was his rule when pursued, he neither followed the runways nor fled in a circle, but raced straight off through the thickets, dodging erratically and traversing whatever obstacles he thought most likely to embarrass his pursuer. But to his horror he found that pursuer still close upon his heels. The shock of this discovery almost brought upon him that fatal panic which so often overtakes a hunted rabbit and makes him yield himself suddenly as an easy prey. But the Homeless One was of sterner stuff, and that moment's panic only stung him to fiercer effort.
Nevertheless, for the weasel's endurance was greater than his, the Homeless One's career would have come to an end in this last desperate adventure, but for the fact that the Unseen Powers once more woke up and took a whimsical hand in the affair. Just as he was darting, stretched out to his limit, beneath the shelter of a snowy bush, a great owl swooped and made a clutch at him. But the owl had miscalculated the speed which the Homeless One was displaying. She missed him; and she was just in time to seize his pursuer instead. Infuriated at this disappointment—for she would have greatly preferred tender rabbit to tough weasel—her talons closed like steel jaws upon the weasel's neck and loins. Rising noiselessly into the air she swept away into the shadows with her writhing victim. And the Homeless One, presently realizing that he was no longer pursued, hid himself in the deepest thicket he could find, with his heart nearly bursting between his ribs.
When winter had finally closed down upon the Ottanoonsis Valley, with snow four and five feet deep on the levels and a cold that made the trees snap like gunshots in the stillness, the Homeless One, though with no lair to hide in, was in reality less uncomfortable than he had been in the variable weather. The cold, though so intense, was of a sparkling dryness; and every snow-covered bush was ready to afford him a secluded shelter. For him and his tribe—more fortunate in this hard season than their enemies—food was fairly abundant, for the depth of the snow enabled them to reach the tender twigs of the birches and willows and poplars. Moreover, alone among the kindreds of the wild, these weak, defenseless, homeless tribes of the snowshoes managed to find heart for gaiety and play amid the white desolation. When the full moon flooded the wastes with her sinister, icy-blue light, the snowshoes would hop forth from their coverts and gather in the open glades. There they would amuse themselves for hours with a strange game, leaping over each other, and chasing each other till their tracks made curious patterns on the snow almost as if they were performing some wild quadrille. But during these gaieties they were never unmindful of their caution. They could not afford to be, in that world of prowling death. At every entrance to the glade there would be stationed a sentinel, erect upon his hind quarters, long ears waving warily, every sense at utmost tension, ready to give the alarm by a loud pounding with his hind feet at the faintest sign of peril.
It was during one such moonlit revel that the Homeless One stood sentry at the post of chief danger, where a dense growth of hemlocks overhung the edge of the glade. He had been some time on duty, and was just about to give up his post to one of the revelers, who was even then hopping over to relieve him, when he caught sound of a stealthy movement close behind the screen of branches. He gave three frantic thumps with his powerful hind feet, and the revelers vanished as if wiped out by a giant breath. In the next instant he leapt for his life, desperately.
But he was too late—by just the moment it had taken him to give the warning signal. Even as he sprang a shape of shadowy grey, like a huge cat with pale moon-eyes and tufted ears, launching itself through the branches, fell upon him and bore him down; and long fangs reached his throat. With a snarl of triumph the famished lynx tore at the warm prey between his paws, and a dark stain spread upon the trampled snow. The Homeless One, as truly as many a hero of history and song, had died for the safety of his tribe.