Part 4

Another mouse panicked. Frosty caught and ate it. By the time he had a third mouse, his appetite was satisfied. In addition, he had learned a priceless lesson; large grazing beasts are apt to disturb small creatures that dwell in the grass. The deer, having grazed their fill, drifted to beds in the shady forest. Frosty curled up in a sunny spot and let this new world come to him.

When two more crows winged lazily over the meadow, cawing as they flew, he knew it as the same sound he had heard while a prisoner in the sack and satisfied his curiosity on that score. He was alert to every furtive rustling, every note in the multi-toned song the breeze sang, every motion in the grass and every flutter of every leaf on a grove of nearby sycamores.

The creatures that lived in the meadow were small ones; various insects; moles and mice; cottontail rabbits and harmless snakes. Frosty identified each in turn and after he'd done so, he stored each away in his brain. Having met and known anything at all, it was his forever. He'd never forget it and never fail to know it should he meet it again. But there was much that he did not know and the unknown roused his instant curiosity. When he saw a flicker of motion over near the sycamores, he concentrated his whole attention on it.

He did not know that he'd seen one of two gray squirrels that had chosen to abide for a couple of days in the sycamores, or that all he'd seen was a glimpse of its tail as it climbed a tree. It was strange and he could not rest until it was familiar. Frosty began to stalk the sycamores, and the stalk saved his life.

He saw nothing and heard nothing, but the same coyote that had ripped the sack open was suddenly upon him. Knowing of the gray squirrels, and hoping to catch one or the other on the ground, the coyote had been stalking the sycamores, too. Finding Frosty, the creature had accepted him instead.

Not stopping to see what threatened, but reacting instantly, Frosty sprang for a sycamore trunk and drew himself up less than two inches ahead of the coyote's snapping jaws. He climbed to the sycamore's crotch and turned to look down. Tongue lolling like a dog's, the coyote looked anxiously up and whined his disappointment. Then, realizing he'd get nothing among the sycamores, he turned away to hunt some rabbits with whose thicket he was acquainted.

Frosty remained in the sycamore's crotch. Though he had considered himself very alert, he'd had no slight inkling of the coyote's presence until it was almost too late. Concentrating on the gray squirrel, he had given little thought to the fact that something might be stalking him. Never again must he be so lax--but he had learned.

Had he been beneath the root, very probably the coyote might have dug him out. But, as had just been proven, the coyote was unable to climb trees. It followed, therefore, that a tree would be a much safer place in which to rest. Frosty cleaned his fur, and when one of the gray squirrels appeared in the higher branches of the same tree, he looked at it with challenging interest. But the squirrel fled in panic-stricken terror when it saw the kitten.

Frosty stayed in his perch until just before nightfall, then descended to hunt again. But the grasshoppers, that had been so easy to catch when numbed by early morning cold, were amazingly agile now. The kitten stalked one that was crawling up a blade of grass. Escaping from between his clutching claws, the insect spread bright-colored wings and flew away. Frosty marked it down, but when he went to the place where it had descended, it was not there. Alighting, the grasshopper had crawled along the ground. Presently, four feet to one side, it spread gaudy wings and took flight once more.

Again Frosty marked it down and again failed to find it. Crawling beneath a dead weed that matched its drab color exactly, the grasshopper was remaining perfectly still.

An hour's hard hunting brought the black kitten one grasshopper, a vast frustration and a mounting hunger. Then twilight crept stealthily over the hills and the grasshoppers settled down in various places where they would pass the hours of darkness. Because they did not move at all and were almost perfectly camouflaged when holding still, and because it was dark, Frosty could not see them.

He pounced eagerly when a mouse rustled in front of him. But since he did not know how to hunt mice--the only ones he'd caught were those that fled in terror from the feeding deer--he missed. He ambled disconsolately down to the cold little stream that wandered through the meadow.

He was hungry and growing hungrier, but he had not forgotten the earlier lesson of the day when, because he'd given all his attention to the gray squirrel in the sycamores, the coyote had almost caught him. Though he was principally interested in getting anything at all to eat, he did not neglect that which lay about him. When he came near the stream, he knew that something else was already there. He stalked cautiously forward until he could see what it was.

A mink crouched on the stream bank, busily eating a fourteen-inch trout that it had surprised in the shallows. Sure of its own powers, fearing nothing, the mink gave no attention to anything save the meal it had caught. Finished, it licked its chops and turned to stare at the tall grass in which Frosty lay.

The mink knew and had known since the kitten came that Frosty was there, for its nose had told it. A bloody little creature, ordinarily it might have amused itself by killing the kitten. But a full belly can make even a mink feel good, and after a moment, it turned to travel downstream.

Frosty stole forward to find the trout's tail, head and fins. The epicurean mink had chosen only the choice portions and left this carrion for any scavenger that might come. But it was good and it dulled Frosty's hunger. His meal ended, he washed up, then and went back into the meadow.

No longer hungry and thus no longer finding it necessary to devote his attention to finding food, the kitten could concentrate on the other creatures that had come into the meadow. He sat on a hillock to watch a fox hunt mice.

It was a big, sleek dog fox, with a mate and cubs back in a hillside den, and it made not the slightest effort to stalk its quarry. Instead, it walked openly, head up and ears alert. When it heard a mouse in a grass-thatched runway, the fox reared, to come stiffly down with both front paws. Five times it reared, and five times it pinned the mouse it wanted and extricated it from the grass beneath which it was pinned.

Suddenly the fox smelled Frosty and whirled. It came trotting, its attitude more one of aroused curiosity than hostility. The kitten was something new, and before the fox took any further action, it wanted to know exactly what this strange creature was. Its head curving gracefully toward Frosty, it stopped four feet away.

Trapped and knowing it, the kitten made ready to fight. He laid his ears back and framed a snarl on his jaws. The growl that rumbled from his chest was the most ferocious of which he was capable. Looking more amused than cautious, the fox extended an exploring paw. Frosty struck and missed. He was no match for this veteran of the wilderness. The fox circled and the kitten turned with him.

After a short space, seemingly well-entertained, the fox padded away. No wanton killer, it was a good hunter and, in this time of plenty, it could take its choice of mice, fat rabbits, or plump grouse. Any one of them was preferable to this snarling kitten, though had it been lean hunting, or had the fox been hungry enough, Frosty would have died right there.

The black kitten tried to hunt mice as he had seen the fox catch them, but, though he could hear them scurrying along their runways, his timing was poor and his knowledge scant. One needed the skill that only experience brought to succeed at this sort of hunting. Frosty leaped a dozen times without pinning even one mouse.

When the five deer came back into the meadow, he trotted eagerly toward them. Though they had no war with mice, the deer never cared where they walked. Their hooves penetrated grass-roofed runways and now and then plowed into a nest. Whenever they did, the mice suffered a panic that momentarily robbed them of reason or of any desire save to escape destruction.

The feeding deer disturbed two that Frosty caught and ate. With the first light of morning, hunger satisfied, he returned to his sycamore and climbed to the familiar crotch. Impatiently he lay down. He was fed and tired, and he wanted to sleep, but the cold morning wind ruffled his fur and made comfortable sleep impossible.

Any other animal would have accepted conditions as they were and slept anyhow. Frosty was a cat, and cats never accept second best if they can get the best.

Frosty climbed out on one of the sycamore's massive limbs until the slender branches in which the limb terminated swayed beneath his weight. That made him afraid of falling, so he turned and went back. But he was still disinclined to accept a bed where the cold wind could chill him if there were a possibility of something better. He tried a second limb, a third, then went up the trunk and found exactly what he sought.

A big limb, growing out of the trunk, had rotted and fallen. In falling, it had left a cavity that had been enlarged by a pair of pileated woodpeckers which had nested in it over a period of years. Blowing leaves had sifted in and partly filled the hollow, and the cold wind seethed harmlessly past. Frosty found it a warm, dry and safe bed. Since the opening was barely big enough to admit him, he could defend it against anything else that tried to enter.

More than once, in the days that followed, it was necessary for him to fill his belly with grasshoppers only for the simple reason that he could catch nothing else. He learned to see them in the grass, and to gauge his strike so he could catch them before they were able to take to the air. He became an expert hunter of grasshoppers, and the precise training this afforded helped him in other ways.

The mice in their grass-thatched runways could never be seen. They must be heard, and since the strike was always blind, it had to be exact. A fraction of an inch one way or the other and the mouse escaped. Frosty learned to strike so expertly that almost never did his victim elude him. Only when he was feeling lazy or had a run of bad luck did he depend on the browsing deer to flush his mice for him.

As he lived, so did he learn. Stealthy footsteps foretold some slinking beast of prey. But so did the sudden chatter of an excited bird, a madly-scooting rabbit, or the deer when they stopped eating and became alert. Frosty taught himself to read such signs, and by them he always knew when the coyote or some other dangerous creature was aprowl. He acquired a vast confidence in his own ability to meet and overcome any dangers that threatened.

Hunting mice in the meadow one night, he came face to face with a bobcat that was similarly engaged. The bobcat snarled and leaped at him, and had he turned to run, Frosty would have been overtaken and killed. Instead of running, he stood his ground and spat back. The bobcat, pretending vast interest in a clump of grass near the kitten, scraped the grass with contemptuous feet and stalked away.

Frosty extended his range from the meadow into the woods, and each journey became a bit longer and a bit more daring. He not only lived but lived well, and his first great triumph was achieved some six weeks after he came to the meadow.

Every afternoon, when the sun was hot and high, a mother grouse led her five bobtailed young to some abandoned ant hills beside the forest. The birds burrowed luxuriously in the gritty earth, working it into their feathers and using their wings and beaks to throw it over their backs. The sand and grit acted as a cleansing bath.

Occasionally other predators visited the meadow in the afternoon, but the grouse came so quietly that these passers-by never knew of them. Frosty, who hunted the meadow almost every afternoon, knew all about them. But after stalking his stealthiest, only to have the mother grouse sound a warning and the whole brood take wing in his very face, he gave himself over to studying them. They were very difficult to stalk because the grass around the ant hills was short and he could be seen. But after two weeks, he thought he saw a way.

This afternoon, a full hour before the grouse family was due to come out of the woods, Frosty was lying motionless behind one of the ant hills. His eyes were unblinking and even the tip of his tail did not twitch. To all appearances, he was a dead thing.

He heard the grouse coming; they were announced by the tiny sounds of their own feet and the mother's querulous clucking as she warned her young to take every care. Frosty remained motionless until two of the young grouse mounted the very ant hill behind which he lay. Then, without seeming to move at all and certainly without visible effort, he was up and over. While the other grouse took thundering wing, he fastened his claws in one and pulled it down.

That gave him an inflated idea of his own prowess, and the next afternoon he was again hiding in the ant hills, waiting for the grouse. They did not come. The young were silly and inexperienced but the mother was no fool. She would never be deceived by the same ruse twice in succession. However, catching just one grouse gave Frosty so much confidence that he increased his field vastly, and as he did, he learned still more.

Because enemies could be anywhere, it was at all times necessary to be sharply alert. But Frosty had already discovered that the things besides himself which could climb trees were disinclined to be hostile, and, once in the forest, he was never very far from a convenient tree. He changed his sleeping place from the sycamore's hollow trunk to the hollow limb of a massive oak in the forest.

He also did more of his hunting in the forest. The place teemed with young rabbits and grouse, many of which were adventurous, incautious, downright silly, or a combination of all three. His kills consisted almost exclusively of these easy-to-catch creatures but, in catching the young and foolish, he was laying the groundwork that would later enable him to bring down the wise and experienced.

Frosty's move into the forest brought increased skill in hunting, but it also brought disaster.

He was prowling one morning when he heard, smelled and then saw a coyote coming. Deliberately, Frosty showed himself. This was a game he had learned to play, gauging exactly every move the coyote made. When his antagonist rushed, Frosty waited until the last possible second before scrambling up the slender trunk of a black birch. He halted just beyond reach of his enemy's strongest leap and looked down contemptuously.

Suddenly he was wrenched from the tree and suspended in mid air. He did not know what had happened, for he had seen and heard nothing, but he did know that he must not submit meekly to anything at all. He tried to twist himself and rise to attack whatever held him. Now he saw that it was a great bird.

Frosty had been plucked from his perch by a great horned owl, but he was lucky. Three days ago, in a foray against Ira Casman's chickens, the owl had been repelled by a shotgun in the hands of Ira's brother. Too fine to kill, the number ten shot had only wounded and weakened him. He had since missed every strike at everything and now, famished, he had caught the first creature he could that might be edible. However, instead of being deeply imbedded, his claws were hooked only through the loose skin on Frosty's back.

The owl winged toward a pine stub, alighted on a branch and turned to kill his captive so he could eat it. But the second he found a purchase for his feet, Frosty attacked furiously. He sank his teeth through feathers into flesh, even while he raked with his claws. Always before, such of the owl's victims as had lived until they were landed in a tree were terrified and shivering, easy prey. He had bargained for no such fury as this.

He took wing again, and this time his course led across the swamp. On the other side was a ledge of rock. Even a cat, dropped from any considerable height onto it, would not be likely to move again.

Frosty knew only that he was helpless, and the knowledge redoubled his anger. He twisted and turned, doing his best to fling himself into any position from which he could claw or bite his captor. Without knowing what it was or what it meant, he heard Andy Gates's shot.

He did know that the owl went suddenly limp and that they plummeted toward the swamp. Strikingly, Frosty was momentarily stunned. He tried dazedly to get up and run away when something else seized him.

He turned to attack this new enemy.

5

PARTNERS

Twisting himself almost double, Frosty sank his teeth into the fleshy part of Andy's hand and raked with all four paws. Blood welled from the scratches and cuts and dripped onto the dead owl. But instead of flinging the kitten from him, Andy encircled Frosty's neck with his right thumb and forefinger, rendered his front paws ineffective by slipping his other three fingers behind them, grabbed his rear paws with his left hand and stretched him out. He murmured,

"If you aren't the little spitfire!"

Unable to do anything else, Frosty could only glare. The smile that always lingered in Andy's eyes almost flashed to his lips. His face softened. He spoke soothingly,

"You might as well stop it. You'd have a real rough time clawing me all to bits."

Frosty snarled and Andy grinned. He'd never had a cat or thought of getting one, but besides his fighting heart, there was something about Frosty to which he warmed. Without thinking that he too had defied conventional living, Andy recognized something akin to himself. He said firmly,

"You're going to get some help whether you want it or not."

Holding Frosty so that he could neither scratch nor bite, Andy carried him back to the house, pushed the door open with his knee and wondered. The kitten must be hurt because nothing withstood the strike of a great horned owl without getting hurt. In spite of the fact that he did not appear to be seriously injured, he probably would bear watching for a few days. Andy thought speculatively of one of the cages in which the muskrats had been shipped. He'd be able to watch the spunky little fellow closely if he put him in one.

For no apparent reason, he suddenly remembered when he had lived in town, working on the railroad nights and going to school days. There had always been a feeling of too little room and too much confinement. He looked again at Frosty . . . and put him down on the floor.

"Guess we won't lock you up."

Frosty scooted beneath the stove and again Andy's smile threatened to blossom. Running, the kitten looked oddly like a strip of black velvet upon which frost crystals sparkle. It was then that Andy gave him his name.

"Okeh, Frosty. If that's what you like, that's what you can have."

He stooped to peer beneath the stove and was warned away with a rumbling growl, so he straightened. After he had satisfied himself that the kitten was all right, Frosty would be free to go his own way. There never had been and never would be any prisoners in the swamp.

Going outside, careful to latch the door behind him lest it blow open and let Frosty escape, Andy caught up a discarded tin can and took a spade from his shed. He turned the rich muck at the swamp's edge, dropped the fat worms he uncovered into the can, then went back to the house for a willow pole with a line, hook and cork bobber attached. Carrying the pole and can of worms, he made his way to the watery slough in front of his house.

While their dozen children sported in the slough, Four-Leaf and Clover dug succulent bulbs in the mud on the opposite bank. None paid any attention to Andy. This colony, protected by the nearness of the house and seeming to know it, was not nearly as wary as those that lived in more remote sections of the swamp. Even the great horned owls had not attacked them. Andy strung a wriggling worm on his hook and was about to cast it when,

"Howdy."

Andy turned to face Luke Trull, who had stolen upon him unseen and unheard. Still wearing his sun-faded trousers and torn shirt, still needing a haircut and shave, his eyes were fixed on the muskrats in the slough. Andy's heart sank. He'd feared the native swamp predators. But not even the great horned owls could work the same fearful damage as Luke Trull, should he decide to come raiding. Andy said coldly,

"Hi, Luke."

"I heerd tell," the other smirked, "'bout somethin' new in the swamp."

"Who told you?"

"News gits 'round."

"There is something new. But it belongs to me and so does the swamp. Both are to be left alone."

"Oh sure. Sure 'nough. I aim to leave 'em alone. They's mushrats, ain't they?"

"That's right. They're muskrats."

"Wu'th a heap of money, ain't they?"

"Not a 'heap.' Maybe a couple of dollars or so for a good prime pelt."

"Could be a heap given a man ketches enough of 'em. How many you got all told?"

"Not enough to start trapping."

"The hills is full of talk 'bout how you've turned your no-count swamp into a mushrat farm. They's talk 'bout how you aim to get rich off mushrat pelts."

"Nobody's going to get rich. And anybody who traps any muskrats before I give the word, or without my permission, will be in trouble."

"Oh, sure. Sure 'nough. But I've already said I don't aim to bother 'em none."

Andy said shortly, "That's a good idea. I'll be seeing you, Luke."

"Yep. I'll be 'round."

The lean hillman drifted away as silently as he had come and Andy cast his baited hook. But his thoughts were troubled ones.

He had hoped to keep his muskrat ranch a secret, but he should have known the impossibility of that. Only he knew all the safe paths through the swamp, but Luke Trull, the Haroldsons and the Casmans knew some of them. Frequently they came to fish in some favored slough or other. Somebody must have seen a colony of muskrats--perhaps they'd stumbled across Four-Leaf and Clover and their family--and it hadn't been hard to piece the rest of the story together. Probably Johnny Linger, the express agent, hadn't talked to any hillman. But Johnny had friends in town to whom he might have talked, his friends had friends, and by the time enough people knew the story, it could easily get back to the hill dwellers.

Andy was so absorbed with this new problem that he was entirely unaware of the fact that his cork bobber had disappeared. He yanked the pole, missed his strike and strung another worm on the stripped hook. He might post his swamp against trespassers. Not that trespass signs had ever kept a single Casman, Haroldson--or especially a Trull--from going where he wished to go but at the very least they'd be evidence that he had acted in his own behalf. But trespass signs or not, there was going to be trouble in plenty if human predators started raiding his muskrats and trouble was always better avoided.

He missed another nibble and began to concentrate on his fishing. Very possibly he was killing his ogres before he met them. But when Luke Trull saw a possibility of earning money without working for it--?

The bobber disappeared again. Andy struck in time, lifted a flapping jumbo perch out of the slough, put it on a stringer, rebaited and cast his line. There was little sport in catching the perch with such heavy tackle, but they were delicious eating and the slough swarmed with them. Andy fished until he had six.