the open during the day.

By that mysterious means through which the wild creatures convey ideas
to each other, Dusty Star made it plain to Kiopo that they must go and
hide. Kiopo understood hiding. Half his life long he had either been
going into hiding, or coming out. Directly they came upon a deep gully
with a thicket at the head of it, both the boy and the wolf knew they
had found the place to lie in till the dark.

It did not take Kiopo long to make himself a lair in the centre of the
thicket. It was a thorny covert, not too comfortable, but it was safe
from prying eyes. As the sun rose higher, the air grew warm. The air was
full of a drowsy silence in which tiny noises hummed. First the wolf,
and then the boy, settled themselves to sleep.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, Kiopo began to be restless. In
other words, his stomach reminded him that it was time to stop feeling
empty. He crept cautiously to the edge of the thicket and looked out.
Down the gully on one side, far over the prairies on the other, there
was nothing moving to be seen. Either the Indians had not started on
their search, or else they had not come in this direction. True to his
lifelong training, Kiopo examined the country carefully on every quarter
before venturing to leave the thicket in search of game. Apparently his
observations satisfied him that nothing dangerous was afoot, for Dusty
Star, who was now awake, watched him quit the shelter of the bushes and
drop over the edge of the gully as quietly as a cloud-shadow floats.

About half-way down the gully a large buck rabbit was washing itself in
the sun. The instant Kiopo sighted it, he flattened himself to the
ground, and never blinked an eye.

The rabbit, utterly unconscious of the threatened danger, went on
licking its paws and drawing them down its face, as if the only
important thing in life was to be sure of being clean. And, as it did
so, inch by inch and foot by foot, the grey flatness that was Kiopo
moved very slowly towards it, and hardly seemed to breathe.

While Dusty Star watched the lithe wolf-body working its way down the
gully, creeping nearer and nearer to its kill, he became aware of
another similar shape approaching the same spot, but from a different
direction and much higher up the further side. The wolfishness of its
appearance was made all the greater by the fact that, like Kiopo, it
kept very close to the ground in its stealthy onward movement, taking
advant