THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LUCY 119 
cats in full pursuit. Then he had waited 
patiently, and he had seen the four cats come 
back, first one gray one, then a gray and a mottled 
one, then Lucy herself, so dark and fine furred 
that his finger itched on the trigger. None of 
them, however, got near enough for a shot. They 
were headed, of course, for their den, some dis- 
tance off around a point. As sly as they, this 
hunter watched them disappear, nor did he at- 
tempt to follow. Instead, he went down the 
mountain as darkness gathered, and got down his 
rusty steel traps from their peg in the wood- 
shed. 
He didn’t tell anybody what he had seen, for 
two reasons. The first reason was that he didn’t 
want anybody else to get those cats; the second 
reason was that he felt sure nobody would believe 
him, it being an accepted fact that wildcats hunt 
alone, not in packs, and never chase deer, anyhow. 
But he had seen what he had seen, just the same. 
He didn’t set his traps at once. Instead, he 
waited till deer hunting week was over, and then 
he went fishing through the ice. When he had 
accumulated several pickerel, he journeyed up 
