432 



RECREATION 



seen or scented the prints in the trail of 

 the hob-nailed boots and the clumsy 

 burro. A stick lay carelessly thrown 

 across the trail. Pronghorn stepped 

 over it and on the pan of the buried 

 steel trap. Instantly the toothed jaws 

 closed on his fetlocks. Snorting, he 

 sprang away, dragging the trap from 

 its setting. The heavy clog attached to 

 the chain caught in the brush. Another 

 bound and he had wrenched himself 

 free, yet left half his hoof in the trap. 

 Again he sought the cedar thicket and 

 lay down and licked his maimed hoof 

 and browsed on the purple berries. In a 

 few weeks his hoof had grown out 

 again, but twisted much like the upper 

 half of a letter "f." 



Spring came and the snow banks re- 

 treated to the high peaks of the Mogol- 

 lon mountains, and with them went 

 Pronghorn and his band. There they 

 browsed with the cattle and invaded 

 their salt grounds for a lick at the great 

 pieces of salt the cowboys had packed 

 from the distant railway station. The 

 cowboys came to know his trail by the 

 crooked hoof print and its large size. 

 "Crooked Toe," they named him. Yet 

 they had seen him but once, on Canon 

 Diablo, when they had kicked up the 

 dust all about him with their .45's. In 

 the snow of early winter Pronghorn, his 

 band now scattered, took his lonely way 



to the Tonto Basin range. The snow 

 lay heavy on the foothills when he ar- 

 rived at the old familiar cedar thicket, 

 and the smoke from the trapper's camp- 

 fire again rose lazily above the tree- 

 tops. - 



He "te his fill of the purple berries and 

 then took his way to the nearby spring 

 to slake his thirst, for he had traveled 

 far and long. He did not see a large 

 cougar crouched on a great boulder by 

 which he must pass, nor did the light 

 wind from the opposite direction bring 

 any warning to his keen nose. He came 

 past the boulder, and like a flash the 

 cougar sprang. Quick as was the cougar 

 the deer was even quicker, and turning 

 he caught the big cat squarely on the 

 great antlers. 



It had been a battle royal, so the trap- 

 per said when an hour later he came 

 and read the story in the reddened 

 trampled snow, flecked with tufts of 

 bloody cougar fur and shreds of deer 

 skin. The cougar, pierced to his vitals, 

 had dragged himself behind the boulder 

 and died. At the spring lay Pronghorn, 

 his antlers bathed in his enemy's blood 

 and his eyes glazed in death. 



Once more the bleat of a new-born 

 fawn was heard in the Picachos, which 

 began learning its daily lesson from the 

 forest and its dwellers. Such is the way 

 of the woods. 



