246 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
live in the chipmunk’s hole, the snows were fre- 
quent and the world was buried deeper and 
deeper under them, and it was bitter cold. More 
and more Red Slayer found himself hunting be- 
cause he was hungry, and not just for the fun of 
killmg, and he began to take longer chances. 
More than once he hunted where he knew Big 
Reddy, the fox, was hunting, too, in the hope of 
getting a rabbit. It was his good fortune one 
day, traveling over the snow with his black tail 
about all of him which you would have noticed, to 
come upon fresh rabbit tracks leading into a 
dense thicket of shrubs and very small trees. He 
sneaked in under the bushes silently and swiftly, 
his nose telling him the game was near. There 
were, in fact, no less than four rabbits in that 
thicket, each one crouched under a mat of over- 
hanging shrubbery, taking a midday snooze. 
These rabbits, too, had been hungry, and only 
the night before had come upon a stand of seed- 
ling maples, with juicy terminal buds in easy 
reach. They had fed well, and now were taking 
their ease. Red Slayer slunk up close to the 
nearest one, which stirred uneasily, some sixth 
