terest Ba'tiste.
Ba'tiste's eyes were for lairs of grass crushed so recently that the
spear leaves were even now rising; for holes in the black mould where
great ripping claws had been tearing up roots; for hollow logs and
rotted stumps where a black bear might have crawled to take his
afternoon siesta; for punky trees which a grisly might have torn open to
gobble ants' eggs; for scratchings down the bole of poplar or cottonwood
where some languid bear had been sharpening his claws in midsummer as a
cat will scratch chair-legs; for great pits deep in the clay banks,
where some silly badger or gopher ran down to the depths of his burrow
in sheer terror only to have old bruin come ripping and tearing to the
innermost recesses, with scattered fur left that told what had happened.

Some soft oozy moss-padded lair, deep in the marsh with the reeds of the
brittle cat-tails lifting as if a sleeper had just risen, sets
Ba'tiste's pulse hopping--jumping--marking time in thrills like the
lithe bounds of a pouncing mountain-cat. With tread soft as the velvet
paw of a panther, he steals through the cane-brake parting the reeds
before each pace, brushing aside softly--silently what might
crush!--snap!--sound ever so slight an alarm to the little pricked ears
of a shaggy head tossing from side to side--jerk--jerk--from right to
left--from left to right--always on the listen!--on the listen!--for
prey!--for prey!

"Oh, for sure, that Ba'tiste, he was but a fool-hunter," as his comrades
afterward said (it is always so very plain afterward); "that Ba'tiste,
he was a fool! What man else go step--step--into the marsh after a
bear!"

But the truth was that Ba'tiste, the cunning rascal, always succeeded in
coming out of the marsh, out of the bush, out of the windfall, sound as
a top, safe and unscratched, with a bear-skin over his shoulder, the
head swinging pendant to show what sort of fellow he had mastered.

"Dat wan!--ah!--diable!--he has long sharp nose--he was thin--thin as a
barrel all gone but de hoops--ah!--voila!--he was wan ugly garcon, was
dat bear!"

Where the hunters found tufts of fur on the sage brush, bits of skin on
the spined cactus, the others might vow coyotes had worried a badger.
Ba'tiste would have it that the badger had been slain by a bear. The
cached carcass of fawn or doe, of course, meant bear; for the bear is an
epicure that would have meat gamey. To that the others would agree.

And so the shortening au