however, and he kept after it
until he had it safe in his two hands.

It happened that when he pounced at last upon the toad he disturbed
with his presence a colony of red ants on moving day. The close ranks
of them, coming and going in a straight line, caught and held Buddy's
attention to the exclusion of everything else--save the horned toad
he had been at such pains to acquire. He tucked the toad inside his
underwaist and ignored its wriggling against his flesh while he squatted
in the hot sunshine and watched the ants, his mind one great question.
Where were they going, and what were they carrying, and why were they
all in such a hurry?

Buddy had to know. To himself he called trailherd--but father's cattle
did not carry white lumps of stuff on their heads, and furthermore, they
all walked together in the same direction; whereas the ant herd traveled
both ways. Buddy made sure of this, and then started off, following what
he had decided was the real trail of the ants. Most children would have
stirred them up with a stick; Buddy let them alone so that he could see
what they were doing all by themselves.

The ants led him to a tiny hole with a finely pulverized rim just at the
edge of a sprawly cactus. This last Buddy carefully avoided, for even
at four years old he had long ago learned the sting of cactus thorns. A
rattlesnake buzzed warning when he backed away and the shock to Buddy's
nerves roused within him the fighting spirit. Rattlesnakes he knew also,
as the common enemy of men and cattle. Once a steer had been bitten on
the nose and his head had swollen up so he couldn't eat. Buddy did not
want that to happen to HIM.

He made sure that the horned toad was safe, chose a rock as large as he
could lift and heave from him, and threw it at the buzzing, gray coil.
He did not wait to see what happened, but picked up another rock, a
terrific buzzing sounding stridently from the coil. He threw another
and another with all the force of his healthy little muscles. For a
four-year-old he aimed well; several of the rocks landed on the coil.

The snake wriggled feebly from under the rocks and tried to crawl away
and hide, its rattles clicking listlessly. Buddy had another rock in
his hands and in his eyes the blue fire of righteous conquest. He
went close-close enough to have brought a protesting cry from a
grownup-lifted the rock high as he could and brought it down fair on
the battered head of the rattler. The loath