Andy had a sobering thought. No ice would deter Luke Trull, the deadliest predator of all! Andy had expected the fellow to strike before this. Though far from their best, soon pelts would be good enough to command a fair price. However, Luke had not come and Andy hoped he would not.

Frosty rose, stretched, leaped lightly to the floor and delivered himself of a querulous call. Andy grinned and sat up in bed.

"Time to be moving, huh?"

He swung out of bed, padded across the floor, lifted the stove lid, stirred the gray ashes with his lid lifter and dropped dry kindling on hot coals. Fire nibbled anxiously at the kindling, then took a big bite and flame crackled. Andy dressed. He lifted the lid again to add some chunks of wood and looked out the window.

The wind still blew hard; but after spitting out just enough snow to dust everything, rolling black clouds had closed their mouths tightly.

The thermometer outside the window registered exactly one degree above freezing. Andy cut slices from a slab of bacon and laid them in a skillet. His eyes were questioning and he strained to listen. This first real touch of winter should have brought more than just a north wind; wild geese should have blown in, too. But he could not hear them calling.

Frosty looked expectantly at his partner, voiced an imperious command and walked to the door. Andy let him out. Frosty had had no breakfast, but that was nothing to worry about. No longer a kitten but a great cat, he was well able to take care of himself and Andy had long since discovered that, though he made no distinction between young and old, or male and female, he did not kill wantonly. He did take what he wanted to satisfy his hunger, but so did everything else. Andy broke eggs into the skillet and laid two slices of bread on the stove to toast.

He was always busy, but during the next six weeks he'd be doubly so.

With waterfowl season open, small game season about to open, and deer hunting to follow that, the time had arrived both to enjoy sport and to fill his winter larder. Andy hurried through breakfast and the morning's housework, took a double-barreled twelve gauge shotgun from the gun rack, pulled his boots on and donned a wool jacket. He thrust half a dozen number two sh.e.l.ls into his pocket and went into the swamp.

He walked fast, paying little attention to the noise he made and making no special effort to conceal himself. Geese were the wariest of game, and only by accident would a flock alight on any accessible pond or slough. They preferred hidden places, deep in the swamp, and long experience had taught Andy where to find waters which the geese liked best.

The boy halted to watch a couple of young muskrats that were frantically cutting reeds to store for winter use. He shook his head in wonder.

These animals were the offspring of some muskrats he had liberated.

They'd never faced a winter in the swamp; they hadn't even lived through a winter, but they still knew enough to cut and store food. How did they know? Andy couldn't explain it, nor could anyone else. Instinct, perhaps, was responsible for part, but Andy had never accepted the theory that instinct is responsible for all a wild creature's actions.

If this were true, the muskrats he had planted should have known by instinct that there would be predators about. They'd had to learn, but in learning, they had pa.s.sed some knowledge on to their offspring. The young were more wary than their parents had been. Maybe, Andy thought, only the fittest of the adults he'd planted had survived. They'd lived because they were smarter or stronger, or perhaps both. It followed that most of the offspring of such parents would be smart and strong too, and thus it became a process of natural selection.

He went on and came to a long, wide slough in which the five muskrats lived. Relatively shallow, the slough had a quicksand bottom, and, according to legend, the bones of two men lay somewhere in its depths.

They were a Gates and a Trull who had met here, started a hand-to-hand battle and tumbled into the water. In this instance, legend probably was strictly fancy, with no basis in fact. The slough was not deep, but a good swimmer who knew what he was doing might have every chance of crossing it safely. Andy frowned.

On the far side of the slough was a high k.n.o.b. A scattering of brush and scrub aspen grew there, and almost at the very edge of the slough was a huge sycamore with gnarled branches and a hollow trunk. A well-marked path led out of the water into the hollow.

Andy's frown deepened. Muskrats had made the path, and if they intended to live in the hollow sycamore, they risked a very precarious situation.

Predators could reach them there, but, above and beyond that danger, they'd be locked out of the slough when it froze. Then, even if they did not fall to some fanged or taloned prowler, they'd starve. Muskrats could not live on hard-frozen vegetation.

Andy went around the slough, broke his shotgun and extracted the sh.e.l.ls, then leaned his weapon against an aspen. He knelt beside the sycamore, but when he sought to support himself with his left hand, he slipped and his arm sank to the elbow in mud. Scrambling hastily to pull himself back, he grimaced at the muddy sleeve, cleaned it as best he could with a handful of rushes and removed his jacket to wring the water out. It was not yet cold enough to make it necessary to start a fire so he might dry out the jacket.

The next time he knelt, he braced his left hand against the sycamore before he peered into the gloomy interior. When his eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he saw a burrow at the far end. Satisfied, he rose. The muskrats were not naturally lazy creatures that had chosen to live in the sycamore, rather than dig their own den. They were merely using the hollow as a partial shelter for a surface den, and doubtless there was another exit that led directly into the water. Andy searched until he found it, under an overhanging bank.

He caught up his shotgun, reloaded and continued into the swamp. A hundred yards farther on, a young deer, a spring-born fawn, looked steadily at him, twitched long ears, stamped a nervous hoof, then hoisted a white tail and bounded into the swamp. It was followed by two more fawns, which, in turn, were trailed by a pair of adult does. Andy stood perfectly still. At this season, a buck should be with the does and he wanted to locate the buck.

After a moment, he saw what he was looking for. Off in the swamp gra.s.s was the barest ripple of motion, a phantom thing that at first seemed not even to exist. It was the craggy-horned old patriarch, the same beast that Frosty had seen and that, later, had driven his smaller rival away. Too smart to show himself in any open s.p.a.ce, the old buck was sneaking, almost unseen, through gra.s.s that was tall enough to cover his back. But he had forgotten about his antlers, and now and again they showed. Andy watched closely until the old buck was out of sight.

Every year, if for nothing except for winter meat, a buck was a necessity and this was far and away the biggest in the swamp. But he was also by far the wisest. Andy had hunted him for the past three seasons and had managed only a couple of snap shots at him. The old buck refused to be driven from the swamp, and he was acquainted with every inch of that. He never panicked, seldom made an unwise move, and he knew all about hunters with firearms.

Andy bent his head against the wind and walked on. Four weeks would bring another deer season and he intended to spend at least the first half of it matching wits with the old patriarch. If he couldn't get him, he'd take a smaller buck. He looked again at the rolling black clouds.

He had heard no geese nor had he seen any, but it was goose weather and they should be down. Nearing the slough where he hoped to find them, Andy crouched so that his head was below the tops of the swamp gra.s.s. He knew the game he sought. Not even the old buck was warier or harder to approach. When the boy saw the tops of some tamaracks that flanked the slough, he held the shotgun in his right hand and crawled. He advanced with almost painful slowness. A suspicious sound could warn geese as swiftly as an enemy in sight. The last twenty yards Andy wriggled on his stomach. He looked through a fringe of swamp gra.s.s at the slough.

More than twenty geese swam on it, but the sentry they'd posted had become suspicious and had alerted the others. Positive that the geese had not seen him, and until now equally certain that they had not heard him, Andy grinned his appreciation. He must have made some sound which possibly nothing except a wild goose could have detected, but his stalk was successful. Well within range, all he had to do was stand up and get two of the flock when they took to the air. Then his glance strayed across the slough and he muttered under his breath.

One on a lower branch and one on an upper, two great horned owls sat in the same tamarack. Andy muttered again. Within easy range of wild geese, he might have at least two. But choosing them meant letting the owls go, and if he did, he might very well pay for his choice with a dozen or more muskrats. Andy sighed.

He leveled his shotgun, sighted on the topmost owl and squeezed the trigger. Almost before the booming report died, he got the second owl with the other barrel. In a frantic haste, he ejected the two empty sh.e.l.ls and slipped fresh ones in, but with a great flapping of wings, the geese were already airborne. Andy sighed again and watched them go.

He still might shoot, but he could no longer be certain of a kill and it was far better to let the geese escape than to wound one.

Andy turned dejectedly away from the slough. His swamp was not on one of the great flyways, down or up which, according to the season, waterfowl stream. Only the strays alighted here, and some seasons they were very few. The boy shrugged and walked on. The two geese he had hoped to get would have provided his Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners--and several more besides. But the great horned owls were far too dangerous to be tolerated. Andy longed for the freeze--up that would make his muskrats safe.

The next day, on a different slough, Andy bagged two mallards out of a flock that beat hastily into the air before him, and the day after that he got two more. He plucked and dressed the ducks, wrapped each separately in flour sacking and hung it in his shed to freeze. These were the last of the waterfowl. If more came, he missed them.

The weather, never very cold or very warm, dropped to a few degrees below freezing every night and climbed a few degrees above it every day.

There were some more snow flurries and brittle sh.e.l.l ice formed on the edges of some ponds and sloughs. But, except in places that were shadowed all day long, both snow and ice melted under the noon sun. Andy made ready for the trapping and small game season.

An hour before dawn on opening day, he had breakfasted. He let Frosty out, and with the shotgun under his arm, started off.

His way led him into the hills, rather than the swamp, for this morning he intended to set fox traps and there were more foxes in the hills.

Black night was just shading into gray dawn when he threaded his path among a copse of scrub oak toward a huge stump that had supported a great pine but that was now a melancholy, moss- and lichen-covered relic. Andy pawed aside some dead leaves that seemed to have blown into the stump and revealed his fox traps.

Along with a packsack, leather trapping gloves, a roll of canvas, a bottle of scent, trap stakes and even the hatchet used to drive the stakes, they had been in the stump all summer and no trace of human scent could possibly cling to them. Before doing anything else, Andy slipped his hands into the gloves. Being careful to touch them with nothing except the gloves, he put eight traps, eight stakes, the roll of canvas, the hatchet and the bottle of scent into the packsack and shouldered it. The hills were cut with numerous tote roads over which, at one time, wagons loaded with timber had traveled. Though some were brush-grown, most such roads remained open enough so that foxes en route from one place to another traveled them. Approaching such a road, Andy stopped.

He unrolled his strip of canvas, walking on it as he did so. When he came to the middle of the road, he knelt to study the ground carefully.

After he was sure he had memorized every tiny detail, he used the hatchet's blade to scoop a hole just big enough to hide a set trap. The surplus earth he scattered to either side. He started a stake through the trap ring and kept pounding until the top of the stake was level with its surroundings. Then he replaced every leaf and every blade of gra.s.s exactly as it had been.

Andy took the bottle of scent from his pack, uncorked it and grimaced.

The scent was a nauseous substance, composed of exactly measured portions of thoroughly rotted fish; the castor, or scent glands, of beaver; oil of asafetida and oil of wintergreen. Its odor would shame the most formidable skunk, but foxes found it irresistible! Andy put one drop on his set trap and, rolling up his canvas as he did so, walked backwards. In like manner, he set seven more fox traps.

He hurried back toward the house, for he wanted to spend the afternoon in his swamp, but when a fat rabbit with a flashing white tail scooted before him, he shot it. He collected four more rabbits, the bag limit for one day. However, the possession limit was ten and rabbits were plentiful. If he froze these five and four more, he would still have one under the possession limit and, whenever he felt so inclined, he would be ent.i.tled to shoot a rabbit for his dinner. Andy skinned and dressed his rabbits and hung them in the shed. After a hurried lunch, he exchanged his packs for boots and went into the swamp with mink traps.

After reading sign in the few snows that had lingered after sunup, he had determined that there were sixteen mink in the swamp. If he took ten, there would still be enough to perform the necessary functions of such predators, such as catching sick rabbits that would otherwise spread disease and restocking the swamp next year.

Andy waded a winding little watercourse. He knew mink as inquisitive creatures that will investigate and, if possible, squeeze into every crack and crevice along their line of travel. On this knowledge he had based his plan for trapping mink without catching any muskrats, which also might travel the waterways. He set his traps at places which mink would investigate but muskrats were likely to avoid, and he baited each with a tiny bit of scent from the scent glands of mink trapped last year. On the way home, he shot two grouse and added them to his collection in the shed.

Thereafter, while the weather became neither very cold nor unduly warm, Andy went into the hills every morning and into the swamp every afternoon. He added l.u.s.trous fox pelts to his cache in the fur shed, took the ten mink he wanted to catch in eight days and worried because the winter freeze was late. However, neither Luke Trull nor any extraordinary wave of natural predators had as yet attacked the muskrat colonies.

The night before deer season opened, Andy took his 30-30 from its rack and looked through the spotless bore. He put the rifle to his shoulder, squinted over the sights, and in imagination he was actually sighting on the great swamp buck.

The next morning, he set out on what he was sure would be the hardest hunt of his life.

At first Frosty was puzzled by and resentful of the strange madness that had suddenly come over his partner. He had gone once with Andy into the swamp and once into the hills, and each time his companion had used his shotgun. Though Frosty did not mind the snap of a .22, the blast of this great weapon was a tremendous shock to feline nerves. After the first discharge, he'd hoped that Andy would never fire the shotgun again.

After the second, he decided definitely that he would not be around if it were shot off any more. Thereafter, when Andy carried the shotgun, and he carried it every day, Frosty took himself elsewhere.

Angry at first, feline philosophy came to Frosty's aid. It was decidedly a madness--anyone who would make such a noise had to be insane--but sooner or later Andy would regain his senses and they could take up their companionship where it had been broken off. Frosty roamed the swamp, going where he wished and doing as he pleased, for he was very sure of himself and his own powers now.

The night before deer season opened, he fed heartily on a rabbit, slept in a hollow log . . . and resumed prowling. Just before daylight, he came upon the big buck.

The fawns had long since been driven away to shift for themselves and one of the does had gone of her own free will. When the patriarch approached the remaining doe, she slashed viciously at him with a front hoof and ran a few steps. The second time he came near, she slashed again and disappeared in the swamp gra.s.s. Still in the grip of the rutting season's urge, the angry buck sc.r.a.ped the ground with his antlers.

Frosty watched with interest. He had never met his superior. Except for Andy, he had never even met his equal, so he understood this enraged beast. The cat soft-footed to an aspen that grew in front of a ledge of rocks and gauged the exact distance to a crevice beneath the ledge. Then he deliberately showed himself. At once the buck charged.