BATISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER 227 



Worms and snails and all the damp clammy things that cling to 

 the cold dark between stone and earth had been gobbled up by some 

 greedy forager. In the trenched ravines crossed by the trappers 

 lay many a hidden forest of cottonwood or poplar or willow. 

 Here was refuge, indeed, for the wandering creatures of the treeless 

 prairie that rolled away from the tops of the cliffs. 



Many secrets could be read from the clustered woods of the 

 ravines. The other hunters might look for the fresh nibbled alder 

 bush where a busy beaver had been laying up store for winter, 

 or detect the blink of a russet ear among the seared foliage betray- 

 ing a deer, or wonder what flesh-eater had caught the poor jack 

 rabbit just outside his shelter of thorny brush. 



The hawk soaring and dropping — lilting and falling and lift- 

 ing again — might mean that a little mink was "playing dead" 

 to induce the bird to swoop down so that the vampire beast could 

 suck the hawk's blood, or that the hawk was watching for an un- 

 guarded moment to plunge down with his talons in a poor "fool- 

 hen's" feathers. 



These things might interest the others. They did not interest 

 Ba'tiste. Ba'tiste's eyes were for lairs of grass crushed so recently 

 that the spear leaves were even now rising ; for holes in the black 

 mould where great ripping claws had been tearing up roots ; for hollow 

 logs and rotted stumps where a black bear might have crawled to 

 take his afternoon siesta ; for punky trees which a grizzly might 

 have torn open to gobble ants' eggs ; for scratchings down the bole 

 of poplar or cottonwood where some languid bear had been sharp- 

 ening his claws in midsummer as a cat will scratch chair-legs ; for 

 great pits deep in the clay banks, where some silly badger or gopher 

 ran down to the depths of his burrow in sheer terror only to have 

 old bruin come ripping and tearing to the innermost recesses, with 

 scattered fur left that told what had happened. 



Some soft oozy moss-padded lair, deep in the marsh with the 

 reeds of the brittle cat-tails lifting as if a sleeper had just risen, 

 sets Ba'tiste's pulse hopping — jumping — marking time in thrills 



