shape driving down upon a pup with
incredible velocity, swooping at a sharp angle, the great wings spread
wide and hissing through the air as the big bird tipped dizzily from
side to side. Within two seconds after the first droning sound had
reached Shady's ears she saw the eagle strike his claws through a pup
and start up the valley on lazily flapping wings. Shady raced madly
under him and raged until the valley echoed to her fury. Then she
quieted and watched till he was but a tiny speck off toward the nesting
peak, the dead pup dangling loosely from the talons that had struck
clear through his slender body, the hind claw on each foot meeting and
interlocking with one front claw in a grip which nothing short of the
actual severing of a leg tendon could break.

Thereafter Shady knew why Breed showed uneasiness when an eagle screamed
near the den.

The pups knew every note of their mother's voice and obeyed it
implicitly. They would be asleep in the den when a note would summon
them forth to play, every pup tumbling hurriedly out; she would give
another cry when they were playing carelessly in the open, the tone
being so nearly identical with that of the first that a man might hear
it a hundred times and detect no difference, yet every pup would dive
headlong for the nearest hole.

Shady learned to watch for the eagles. Nearly always it was a shadow
which warned her first. She would see a swiftly moving black speck
gliding over the snow fields or darting along the slopes of the ridges
that flanked the valley and she instantly issued a warning to the pups,
knowing that where there was a shadow there must be a bird above.
Sometimes Breed saw the birds first and called. Shady relayed the danger
signal to her young, and even if she was half a mile away the pups made
a prompt and desperate spurt for the den.

CHAPTER IX

The snow melted slowly in the high country but by mid-April a few bare
spots showed in the more open meadows, the hardy mountain grass sending
forth green shoots. The rabbits were drawn from the timbered ridges to
nibble these first spring dainties. The surface of the drifts showed
thousands of tiny mouse tracks,--the mice that had lived deep under the
snow, subsisting on food previously stored, now coming forth to swarm
into these first cleared patches.

The pups had grown large and strong and were able to follow their
parents on the meat trail, and they soon learned to catch their own
mice