No man came
near but there were other smells in the night. Once the air near the
ground was rank with fox. He knew that smell, but he did not know the
fainter scent of wildcat. Neither could he tell that the dainty-footed
killer had slipped up within half a dozen yards of his back and crouched
a long moment yearning towards the mountain of warm meat but knowing
that it was beyond its powers to make the kill.
A thousand futile alarms disturbed Alcatraz, for freedom gave the nights
new meanings for him. Sometimes he wakened with a start and felt that
the stars were the lighted lanterns of a million men searching for him;
and sometimes he lay with his head strained high listening to the
strange silence of the mountains and the night which has a pulse in it
and something whispering, whispering forever in the distance. Hunted men
have heard it and to Alcatraz it was equally filled with charm and
terror. What made it he could not tell. Neither can men understand.
Perhaps it is the calling of the wild animals just beyond ear shot. That
overtone of the mountains troubled and frightened Alcatraz on his first
night; eventually he was to come to love it.
He was up in the first grey of the dawn hunting for food and he found it
in the form of bunchgrass.
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