244 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
couldn’t help envying the mink that fat white 
Pekin duck, which had so thoughtfully strayed 
down from the farmyard up by the road. It was 
not exactly fear, and not exactly respect, which 
kept Red Slayer out of the barnyard itself. It 
was rather the sense of mystery, of the unknown. 
Close around the dwellings of man were strange 
smells and alarming noises, there were cats and 
dogs and unexplored recesses into which one 
might run for safety, only to find himself trapped. 
It was Red Slayer’s common sense instinct to 
avoid the houses and barns of man. 
Nor had he, so far in his life, needed to visit 
them. There was plenty of hunting without. 
He liked to hunt at night, for then the deer-mice 
were up and about in the woods, often dancing in 
some tiny glade, where he could pounce upon 
them; the partridges were sleeping in a nest of 
leaves on the ground; the rabbits would be com- 
ing by on their little packed highways on the 
snow, beside which he could crouch and wait. 
But he often hunted by day, too. It was a 
matter of mood, and the state of his stomach. He 
was tricky in his hunting, too, with several dodges 
