42 Wilderness Ways. 



open for red ants; while down on the lake shore a 

 cautious plash-plash told where a cow moose had 

 come out of the alders with her calf to sup on 

 the yellow lily roots and sip the freshest water. 

 Everywhere life was stirring ; everywhere cries, calls, 

 squeaks, chirps, rustlings, which only the wood- 

 dweller knows how to interpret, broke in upon the 

 twilight stillness. 



Kagax grinned and showed all his wicked little 

 teeth as the many voices went up from lake and 

 stream and forest. " Mine, all mine — to kill," he 

 snarled, and his eyes began to glow deep red. Then 

 he stretched one sinewy paw after another, rolled 

 over, climbed a tree, and jumped down from a sway- 

 ing twig to get the sleep all out of him. 



Kagax had slept too much, and was mad with the 

 world. The night before, he had killed from sunset 

 to sunrise, and much tasting of blood had made him 

 heavy. So he had slept all day long, only stirring 

 once to kill a partridge that had drummed near his 

 den and waked him out of sleep. But he was too 

 heavy to hunt then, so he crept back again, leaving 

 the bird untasted under the end of his own drumming 

 log. Now Kagax was eager to make up for lost time ; 

 for all time is lost to Kagax that is not spent in kill- 

 ing. That is why he runs night and day, and barely 



