52 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
mountainside amid the laurel and limestone 
ledges, and he made two entrances to it through 
the snow, a direct front door, and a back door, 
reached by a twenty-foot tunnel. From this den 
he could work down the slope, under cover of the 
laurel (in fact, he had a regular little path trod- 
den down in the deep snow) and come sneaking 
around to the south side of every boulder and 
pounce on any ruffed grouse or pheasant that 
might be sheltered there. No, the trouble was 
that the deep snow, the cold, and the big flight of 
goshawks from the north had seriously dimin- 
ished the number of grouse and pheasants, as well 
as the rabbits. Reddy hated the three great 
horned owls which had come from the north to 
the big dead hemlocks on his mountainside and 
hunted rabbits all night long. He used to yearn 
for the power to climb a tree and get the great, 
sleepy fellows when, by day, they were occasion- 
ally visible, roosting close to the brown trunks, on 
a dead limb. Reddy had already raided about 
all the chicken yards in the neighborhood, and 
after one, or at most, two raids, he was shrewd 
enough to know that traps would be set, and men 
