Then an owl, a huge bird with a mighty spread of wings, labored up from a slough with a muskrat in its talons. Andy leveled his rifle, holding it steady, even while he tried to conquer the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Compared to some other birds, the owls are not swift fliers and this one was furthered slowed by the burden it carried. It was possible to pick it out of the air with a rifle, but Andy held his fire because, obviously, the owl intended to light in one of the trees. A sitting shot was not sporting, but there was no question of sport connected with this and a sitting shot was far more certain.
The owl dipped gracefully toward a tree and Andy followed with the rifle sights. At exactly the right moment, he squeezed the trigger. The vicious little rifle spat its leaden death and the owl dropped limply. He lay tumbled on the ground, talons still imbedded in the muskrat, when Andy reached him. It was a grip of steel, so powerful that the boy had to use the point of his knife to disengage each talon separately.
Andy skinned the still-warm muskrat, knowing as he did so that the pelt would bring less than a good price because the owl's talons had pierced it. But it was something salvaged.
The next owl was a dodging gray shape that winged erratically over the swamp grass, more than six hundred feet away. Andy leveled his rifle, sighted and shot. He shot a second time . . . and a third. On the third shot, a gray feather detached itself from the bird and floated gracefully downwards. But the shot also warned the owl. He dipped out of sight.
Hearing something in the grass that interested him, Frosty went to investigate. Andy strode grimly toward the next grove of trees. He scored a clean miss on an owl perched in a tree, then brought down one in flight. Quickly, he reloaded his little rifle. It was better than the shotgun for such hunting, partly because shotgun shells were so much more expensive and partly because the shotgun was limited in range. He would certainly have killed the owl in the tree had he had the shotgun, but probably he would have merely wounded the pair he had brought down and even owls deserved better than that.
Far off, hopelessly out of range, Andy saw two owls in the hollow sycamore that overlooked the slough where the five muskrats lived. He stooped to crawl. When he was within rifle shot, he raised cautiously above the swamp grass—to see the sycamore empty. He muttered to himself. He did not think that he had frightened the owls, for they were incredibly bold. Doubtless they'd gone off to hunt, and almost surely they were hunting muskrats.
Rising, Andy walked to the hollow sycamore and cradled the rifle in the crook of his arm while he leaned against it. Five minutes later, a muskrat emerged from an underwater burrow, surfaced and swam in little circles. Only his head and back broke water. He regarded Andy with beady little eyes. Although less than ten feet away, the muskrat considered himself safe because he was in the water.
The owl came so silently and so eerily that, somehow, it seemed to have materialized out of thin air. Gliding over the slough, it took the swimming muskrat in both claws and never missed a wing beat as it flew on. Andy gasped. He leveled the rifle and shot five times, but the gathering dusk made his aim uncertain and again he missed. Andy's brain reeled.
Naturally ferocious, the raiding owls were ten times as fierce and ten times as dangerous as they ever were otherwise because they were also desperately hungry. This one must have seen Andy, but the presence of an armed man had not prevented it from taking a muskrat that was not even a pebble's toss away.
Andy glared at the darkening sky, as though his fierce will to hold back the night and let him continue hunting owls would somehow grant time for so long. But approaching night would not be stopped, and he could do nothing before another morning. However, the owls could and would hunt. All night long the muskrats in the swamp would be at their mercy—and they had no mercy!