Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/106

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Windy Boulder

after storms to gather what the sea had thrown on the boulders of the Hole. It was not much wider than one of the sheep-paths on the head-land. Greymuzzle ran along it, and turning a comer by a lichened boulder, disappeared from the sight of Kronk. She had climbed here alone several times during the previous night.

Less than a minute afterwards the raven jumped leisurely over the edge, and opening his wings, rose on the wind, and turning, swept back over his perching place, over snares pegged by rabbit-runs in the grass, and to a shillet wall a hundred yards from the precipice. One of the brass snares Kronk was watching. It had been drawn tight about the neck of a rabbit since early morning; the rabbit had died after two hours of jumping and wheezing. It was cold; its fleas were swarming in agitation over its longer hairs. Kronk was waiting for a meal off the rabbit, but he did not like to go near it until he knew for certain that the trapper, whom he had watched setting the snare the afternoon before, had not tilled a gin beside it specially for Kronk. The raven knew all about the methods of trappers, and the gins and snares they tilled. Several times Kronk had sailed with the wind over the snared rabbit; he sailed without checking by tail or wing, lest the trapper be spying upon him. In every other act of his life he was as cautious, having learned many things about man in more than a hundred years of flying.

The raven was waiting for Mewliboy, the cowardly soaring buzzard hawk, to espy the rabbit; and when Mewliboy had ripped it open

96