early blind, and so old that he had long ago lost the tufts of
feathers over his ears, he was still a giant in strength, and when he
was angry, one could hear the snap of his beak twenty yards away.

For three nights he had been unlucky, and tonight he had been
particularly unfortunate. Two rabbits had come his way, and he had
lunged at each of them from his cover. The first he had missed
entirely; the second had left with him a mouthful of fur--and that was
all. He was ravenously hungry, and he was gritting his bill in his bad
temper when he heard Baree approaching.

Even if Baree could have seen under the dark bush ahead, and had
discovered Oohoomisew ready to dart from his ambush, it is not likely
that he would have gone very far aside. His own fighting blood was up.
He, too, was ready for war.

Very indistinctly Oohoomisew saw him at last, coming across the little
open space which he was watching. He squatted down. His feathers
ruffled up until he was like a ball. His almost sightless eyes glowed
like two bluish pools of fire. Ten feet away, Baree stopped for a
moment and licked his wound. Oohoomisew waited cautiously. Again Baree
advanced, passing within six feet of the bush. With a swift hop and a
sudden thunder of his powerful wings the great owl was upon him.

This time Baree let out no cry of pain or of fright. The wolf is
kipichi-mao, as the Indians say. No hunter ever heard a trapped wolf
whine for mercy at the sting of a bullet or the beat of a club. He dies
with his fangs bared. Tonight it was a wolf whelp that Oohoomisew was
attacking, and not a dog pup. The owl's first rush keeled Baree over,
and for a moment he was smothered under the huge, outspread wings,
while Oohoomisew--pinioning him down--hopped for a claw hold with his
one good foot, and struck fiercely with his beak.

One blow of that beak anywhere about the head would have settled for a
rabbit, but at the first thrust Oohoomisew discovered that it was not a
rabbit he was holding under his wings. A bloodcurdling snarl answered
the blow, and Oohoomisew remembered the lynx, his lost foot, and his
narrow escape with his life. The old pirate might have beaten a
retreat, but Baree was no longer the puppyish Baree of that hour in
which he had fought young Papayuchisew. Experience and hardship had
aged and strengthened him. His jaws had passed quickly from the
bone-licking to the bone-cracking age--and before Oohoomisew could get
away, if he was th