Show ce avo 11 0 amse copy wr 0 ey Z 23 0 az avd coria co ria ty I 1 WHISPER FOOT synopsis warned by hla his physician that he han ban not more than six mo ti to live dan faill falling g alts 1 0 1 despondently ian a park bench wondering dering where lie he should spend those six elt memories Me morlea of 0 his grandfather find and a deep love for or all things of 0 the wild help him in reaching ft a decision in a largo large southern so u thern oregon city city he it s meets people who had known and loved his grandfather a famous tron fron tl erhman ile he maket makes ha his 9 homo home with silas le lennax ax a typical tynca westerner the only other members of the hou household s behold are lennous son bill and daugtry daug tr tr snowbird their abode Is in the umpqua divide and there falling plans to live out the short apan of life which lie he has beets been told Is h hla is prom the tha first F fallings al tin gs heath health I 1 shows a marked improvement and in the companionship of lennox arid and tits his son and daugh daughter ter he tits into the woods lire life as if 1 he had bad bee been n born to it by quick thinking and a remarkable display of nervo nerve he saves len coxs ufa life and hla his own when they are attacked by P mad coyote lennox declares he Is a reincarnation of his grandfather dan falling ing I 1 whose fame as a woodsman Is a household word dan learns that an organized band of 0 out outlaws lams of which bert cranston to Is the lea leader er 11 1 setting etting forest breet tires fires landry elldreth Hll 1111 dreth a former member of tho the gang has been induced to turn states evidence cranston s shoots ts and leaves him for dead dead CHAPTER I 1 continued 8 for when all are said find done there were few bigger cowards in the whole wilderness world than A good many people think that Gray cosit the coyote could take lessons from him in tills this respect but others knowing how a hunter Is brought in occasionally almost till nil human resemblance gone from him because a cougar charged in his death agony think tails Is unfair to the lie larger animal and it Is true that a full grown cougar will sometimes attack horned cattle something that no american animal cares to do unless lie ft wants ants a good fight on tits his paws and of which the very thought would mould throw Graj coat into a spasm and there kliore have hae been even stranger stories orles Bt if one could quite believe them A certain measure ol of respect must be extended to any animal that will hunt the grent great bull elk for to miss the stroke and get caught beneath the churning las lashing hini slashing razor edged front hoofs Is simply tenth death painful and without delay but the lies in the fact that these things tangs are not done in the ordin ordinary tiry rational al blood of hunting what an animal does docs in its death agony or to protect its young what great game it follows in the starving times ot of winter winfer v inter infer can be put to neither its debit nor its cradit cri dit A coyote will charge when mad A raccoon will put tip a wicked light fight when cornered A lien hen twill peck at the liand hand that robs tier lier nest when hunting was fairly good WhIsper foot avoided the elk and steer almost ns as punctiliously as lie he avoided abided mon men which Is saying saving very ery much indeed and tiny any kind of terrier could usually drle drive him straight up a tree hut but lie he lid did like ilke to pretend to he very great and terrible among the smaller forest creatures anil and lie ho was rear fear itself to the leer deer A human hunter who would kill two leer deer a week for fifty two weeks would be called a much utiler name than but yet ot this hild had been whisper foots fonts record on and olt off ever eer since his bis second year par many a groat great ancl wore the scar car of the full aft er which WhIsper foot had lost ills his hold many blany a fawn had crouched panting with terror in the thickets a tit just jast st a tawny light on the he gnarled limb of a pine ganv n doe would grow great eyed tind and terrified terranc ter rifled d at just ills his strange pungent smell small on tile the wind ile HP pawned again arid and tits ills tongs fangs looked white and abnormally large in file lip moonlight ills groat great green eyes were still clouded and languorous from sleep then lie began to steal up tip the ridge toward his hunting grounds gi it was n curious carious tiling thing that lip lie walked atral straight in the e face of the fort foft wind that came down vin from the snow fields an and yet there a v to bp be seen anywhere and had the lie chipmunk sn him wet a paw rind hold it up tip after the asprom f asclon of holding up tip a finger lie HP had a better way of knowing a chill tit at tile cast of ills his whiskers the little breathless ni houndt anund i in the brush around him seemed to madden him alipy made a song to litin hun it a strange st iange tige wild melody that even such mich ns as dan aad lennoy could not experience A thousand stil aniella ells brushed down to him on the wind mete potent thru tiny any wine or lust lie he began to tremble all over with rapture and but unlike cranstone Crans Crittis tons trembling no wilder or ricas ear was keen enough to lir hear the letues letups rustling beneath him CHAPTER it II shortly after nine whisper foot encountered his first herd of leer doer hut but they caught his scent unit anil scattered before lie he could get up tip to them ne he met woof grunting through the and annl lie punctiliously but with wretched spirit left the trail A fight with woof the bear was otte one of the most unpleasant experiences that could be imagined lie ile had a pair of strong arms of which one embrace of a cougars body meant death in one long shriek of pain of cot course arse they fight often they had entirely opposite interests the bear was a berry ente eater r and a honey and the cougar cared too its his own life and beauty to tackle woof in a hunting way A fawn leaped from the thicket in front of him startled by ills his sound in tile the thicket the truth was whisper foot had bad made a wholly unjustified misstep on a try dry twig just at the crucial moment perhaps it was wag the fault of woof whose presence had driven WhIsper foot front from the trail and perhaps because old ago and stiffness was coming coining upon him hut but neither of these facts appeased his anger ile he could scarcely suppress a snarl of fury and disappointment lie continued along the ridge still stealing still alert but ills anger increasing cr with every moment the fact that hat he had to leave the trail again to permit permit still another animal to pass and a particularly insignificant one too make him feel any better this animal had a number of curious stripes along its his bock back and usually did nothing more desperate steal eggs and eat bird fledglings fledgling whisper foot could have crushed him with one bite but tills this was one thing that the great cat as long as he lived would 4 I 1 A full twenty yards farther n never t try to do lie ile got out of tile the vay w ay politely poll lely when stripe back was s st still ili it quarter of n mile away which N nas a 9 quite a compliment to the little anlin il s ability to introduce himself stripe asick was aa familiarly known sta as a sli skunk mik shortly after ton ten the mountain lion hen had a one chance at i buck tte the direction of the he win ind like tl trees the thickets and lie ligat ii nil all in hta his favor it wag old wit wallowing in the salt lick and NN lili lils Per foots heart bounded when lie detected him no human hunter could have hae laid ills his plans with greater enre care lie ile ila had to cut irp fp the tide side of tile the ridge mindful of ills wind ivind then there wag as a long denso thicket in which lie it light within fifty alft feet of the file lick still with the lie wind in lits his face just brinde tilt the lick wo was s another 1 depp I opt thicket from lie could in mako ake illi his leap ills body IoN lowered vered the tall la lied back and forth and now MV it had begin to line have a slight vertical mollon modon this tant f on have learned to watch for ilo ile placed every ee paw with consummate pu grace and few sets of till liu inan imn nerves lime have control over oin log leg muscles to inove such n astonishing patience lie ile sea scarcely cc I 1 y to move moe at all but when scarcely ten feet re nit to stalk a sudden sound pricked th rough the darkness dai kness it entile came from afar but it wits was no less terrible it was as really two sounds sa so close together tant they sounded as one neither black tall nor WhIsper foot lind had any delu ions about them they recognized thein at once in strange ways ass under the skin tint no ronn man ruay describe ea the far off reports of a rifle just today blackball Black Blick tall had seen his doe oe fall a bleeding ee ng w when n this 8 same sound only louder spoke from a covert from which bert cranston had bad poached her and he left the lick in one bound terrified though he was wag by the rifle shot still sprang but tile the distance was too far ills ilia outstretched paw hummed down four feet behind Binck blackballs tails flank then forgetting everything but his anger find and the great cougar opened his mouth month and howled the long night was almost lone done when lie got sight of further gai game 1 once a flock of grouse exploded wl with t h a roar of wings from a thicket but they had been wakened by the first whisper of dawn in the wind and he really had no chance at them soon after this the moon set the larger creatures of the forest are almost as helpless in absolute darkness as human beings altis it Is very well to talk of seeing in the dark but from the alie nature of things even vertical pupils mar only respond to light no owl or bat can see in ib absolute solute darkness it became increasingly likely that eliat WhIsper forit would have to retire to tits his lair w without 1110 t ut any meal whatever but still he remained hoping against hope after a futile fl fifteen f teen minutes of watching a trail he heard a doe feeding on a hillside its footfall was not so heavy as the sturdy tramp of a buck and besides the bucks would be higher on the ridges this time of morning lie ile began a cautious advance toward it for the first yards ards the hunt was in his favor lie ile came up wind and the brush ale a perfect cover but the doe unfortunately fortunately lin was standing a full twenty tw enty yards farther in an open glade under ordinary circumstances Whisper foot would not have madean made an attack A cougar can run swiftly but a deer Is light itself the big cat would have preferred to linger a motionless thing in uie the thickets hoping some other member of the deer herd to which the doe mus must have belonged would come into his ambush but the hunt was late land whisper root foot was very very angry too many times this night he had missed his kill in desperation he leaped from the thicket and charged the leer deer in spite of the preponderant lerant odds against him the charge was almost a success he went fully halt half the distance between them before the deer perceived him then she leaped there seemed to be no interlude of time between the instant tbt she beheld the dlin dim tawny figure in the air and that tit in which tier her long legs pushed out in a speir but she leap straight ahead she knew enough of the cougars to know that the great cat would cetta certainly aim for her head and neck in the the same yay vay tot it a duck hunter leads lead a fast lying flying duck hoping to intercept her leap even 03 her feet left the ground she are seemed to whirl in the air and the deadly talons whipped shipped down in vain then cutting back in front from she raced down wind it Is usually the most unmitigated folly tor for a cougar to chase a deer against which lie he has missed his stroke and it Is also quite fatal to his dignity and who doubts tor for a minute that the th e larger creatures have no dignity and that it Is not very ery dear aar to them simply knows nothing about the ways of they cling to it to the death but tonight one disappointment after another had bad crumbled as the rains crumble leaves the last vestige estlee of Whisper foots self control snarling in fury lie bounded after the doe she wa was 9 lost to sight tit at once in the darkness but for fully thirty yards lie rated raced in tier her pursuit it he had stopped to think it would have been one of the really great surprises of oe his tit life to hear the sudden unmistakable stir and movement of a large living creaturo cren turo not fifteen feet distant li 1 I the thicket ile he llan t stop to think at all ile iia puzzle on the extreme unlikelihood of nf a doe halting ailing in III her ter flight from fioro a cougar jt it Is doubtful whether in the thickets he lind ary r perceptions of the creature other lhnn its movement men lie ile atiq ft is running town down wind sn do it Is ev ertain that he smell it if he saw it at nil all it was just as a shadow ilin dott sufficiently large to be ba that of a deer it was moving crawling ns as woof the bear sometimes crawled to get out of his ili path and leaped straight at it f it was a perfect shot lie ite landed his on its shul deis ills liend hend lashed dow and tin tile lift whito teeth closed all tile the nj ng life ot of Ms mis race he had known nat I 1 mant esir esre es r e that flowed orth illse ills pases pt prula d it a message mes sige shot along his fits nerves nene to its his brain and then he opened ills mouth in a high fur far carrying squeal of utter abject terror ile he spir sprang ting n full fifteen feet back bach into the thickets then alien crouched the hair stood still nt fit nit ills shoulders ills his claws were bared heredi h P vas avas prepared to feht to tile the benth lie ile ull under aland lie he only knew the w worst 0 t single terror of ills his life tt it was not a doe that lie had attacked in tile the darkness it was not urson uron the porcupine or even eve 6 woof it was that imperial muster master of all mangs matt man himself un he find attacked landy hiting droth iving ly wounded from cranstone Crans tons bullet beside the trill word of the nison arson ring would never reach the settlements tle ments atte after all setting selling a forest foreit lira fire TO 10 |