something happened which brought an exclamation of astonishment from his lips.
From a thick tuft of weeds almost directly under the hovering hawk a slim reddish shape leaped into the air. Long pointed jaws snapped together within an inch of the falcon's body, and with a scream of anger Cloud King, the peregrine, shot forward and upward. Dan, craning his neck, could see plainly a big red fox trotting slowly through the sparse grass of the wheat field, the dead grouse hanging from his jaws.
For a moment amazement held the young woodsman motionless. Then a broad grin spread slowly across his thin, sun-tanned face. He watched the fox, which was well out of range, pass on across the field to the cover of the woods, while the falcon swooped and hovered overhead. Then he jumped lightly down from the rock and strode on along the trail.
So it happened that Dan Alexander, setting out one October morning on a hunt which had nothing to do with Cloud King, the peregrine of Devilhead, or with Red Rogue, the old dog fox that was Cloud King's neighbor, encountered these two old enemies of his at the very outset of his quest. Dan knew Cloud King and Red Rogue well—the Bachelors of Devilhead, he sometimes called them, because they lived mateless and alone. It was he who had named
