BATISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER 149 



slabs of stone had been clawed up by mighty hands. 

 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 betraying 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 fall 

 ing and lifting again might mean that a little mink 

 was &quot; playing dead &quot; 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 unguarded mo 

 ment to plunge down with his talons in a poor &quot; fool- 

 hen s &quot; 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 hol 

 low logs and rotted stumps where a black bear might 

 have crawled to take his afternoon siesta; for punky 

 trees which a grisly might have torn open to gobble 

 ants eggs; for scratchings down the bole of poplar or 

 cottonwood where some languid bear had been sharp- 



