Hoof and Claw

HOOF AND CLAW

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO

He saw Jeff with one lynx down, slashing at its throat. Frontispiece
AUTHOR OF KINGS IN EXILE, NEIGHBORS UNKNOWN, THE FEET OF THE FURTIVE, ETC.
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1917 All rights reserved
Copyright, 1913, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine and by The Cosmopolitan Magazine. Copyright, 1914, by The Pictorial Review Company, by The Illustrated Sunday Magazine, by The National Sunday Magazine, by the Cosmopolitan Magazine, and by John Adams Thayer Corporation.
Copyright, 1914 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914 Reprinted April, 1917.

The gaunt, black mother lifted her head from nuzzling happily at the velvet fur of her little one. The cub was but twenty-four hours old, and engrossed every emotion of her savage heart; but her ear had caught the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the mountain. They were confident, fearless footsteps, taking no care whatever to disguise themselves, so she knew at once that they were the steps of the only creature that presumed to go so noisily through the great silences. Her heart pounded with anxious suspicion. She gave the cub a reassuring lick, deftly set it aside with her great paws, and thrust her head forth cautiously from the door of the den.
She saw a man—a woodsman in brownish-grey homespuns and heavy leg-boots, and with a gun over his shoulder—slouching up along the faintly marked trail which led close past her doorway. Her own great tracks on the trail had been obliterated that morning by a soft and thawing fall of belated spring snow— the robin snow, as it is called in New Brunswick—and the man, absorbed in picking his way by this unfamiliar route over the mountain, had no suspicion that he was in danger of trespassing. But the bear, with that tiny black form at the bottom of the den filling her whole horizon, could not conceive that the man's approach had any other purpose than to rob her of her treasure. She ran back to the little one, nosed it gently into a corner, and anxiously pawed some dry leaves half over it. Then, her eyes aflame with rage and fear, she betook herself once more to the entrance, and crouched there motionless to await the coming of the enemy.