nd went toward the sounds of battle.
They grew louder as he approached, more furious, as though the battle
was reaching its climax.

He crossed the creek and went through the trees beyond. There, in a
small clearing no more than half a mile from the town, he came upon the
scene.

A lone prowler was making a stand against two unicorns. Two other
unicorns lay on the ground, dead, and behind the prowler was the dark
shape of its mate lying lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on the
prowler, purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the squeals
of the unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps of the prowler were
faltering as it fought them, the last desperate defiance of an animal
already dying.

He brought up the bow and sent a volley of arrows into the unicorns.
Their gloating squeals died and they fell. The prowler staggered and
fell beside them.

It was breathing its last when he reached it but in the way it looked up
at him he had the feeling that it wanted to tell him something, that it
was trying hard to live long enough to do so. It died with the strange
appeal in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on its
shoulder; a scar such as might have been made long ago by the rip of a
unicorn's horn.

It was the prowler he had known nineteen years before.

The ground was trampled all around by the unicorns, showing that the
prowlers had been besieged all day. He went to the other prowler and saw
it was a female. Her breasts showed that she had had pups recently but
she had been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had been broken
sometime that spring and they were still only half healed, twisted and
almost useless.

Then, that was why the two of them were so far behind the other
prowlers. Prowlers, like the wolves, coyotes and foxes of Earth, mated
for life and the male helped take care of the young. She had been
injured somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns, and
her mate had stayed with her as she hobbled her slow way along and
killed game for her. The pups had been born and they had had to stop.
Then the unicorns had found them and the female had been too crippled to
fight....

He looked for the pups, expecting to find them trampled and dead. But
they were alive, hidden under the roots of a small tree near their
mother.

Prowler pups--_alive!_

They were very young, small and blind and helpless. He picked them up
and his elation drained away as he looked at them.