ted, "Get out! Go away." The
Badger dropped the meat and raised her head. Harry reached and grasped
the food and devoured it with the appetite of one starving. There must
have been another doorway, for later the Badger was behind the child in
the den, and still later when he had fallen asleep she came and slept
beside him. He awoke to find the warm furry body filling the space
between him and the wall, and knew now why it was he had slept so
comfortably.

[Illustration]

That evening the Badger brought the egg of a Prairie Chicken and set it
down unbroken before the child. He devoured it eagerly, and again drank
from the drying mud puddle to quench his thirst. During the night it
rained again, and he would have been cold, but the Badger came and
cuddled around him. Once or twice it licked his face. The child could
not know, but the parents discovered later that this was a mother Badger
which had lost her brood and her heart was yearning for something to
love.

Now there were two habits that grew on the boy. One was to shun the
men that daily passed by in their search, the other was to look to
the Badger for food and protection, and live the Badger's life.
She brought him food often not at all to his taste--dead Mice or
Ground-squirrels--but several times she brought in the comb of a bee's
nest or eggs of game birds, and once a piece of bread almost certainly
dropped on the trail from some traveller's lunch bag. His chief trouble
was water. The prairie pool was down to mere ooze and with this he
moistened his lips and tongue. Possibly the mother Badger wondered why
he did not accept her motherly offerings. But rain came often enough to
keep him from serious suffering.

Their daily life was together now, and with the imitative power strong
in all children and dominant in him, he copied the Badger's growls,
snarls, and purrs. Sometimes they played tag on the prairie, but both
were ready to rush below at the slightest sign of a stranger.

Two weeks went by. Galloping men no longer passed each day. Harry and
the Badger had fitted their lives into each other's, and strange as it
may seem, the memory of his home was already blurred and weakened in the
boy. Once or twice during the second week men had passed near by, but
the habit of eluding them was now in full possession of him.

FINDING THE LOST ONE

[Illustration]

One morning he wandered a little farther in search of water and was
alarmed by a horseman appeari