CHAPTER TWELVE
At sunset, as he was crossing a shoal to deep water under an old ash tree, he stopped at the taint of hounds lying on the scour pitted by their feet. Quietly he turned back to the water to swim sunken in the current, rising only to take in air. Round two bends he drifted, then landed and harkened. Ran up the bank, uncertain. Rose on hind feet, dripping and anxious, A dwarf owl making a peacock-like yowling in the woods beyond the meadow, the squeak of mice, the dry cough of an ewe. He ran back to the river, and after eating fish, he played with a rope of water twisting and untwisting out of a drain, trying to catch it between his paws and bite it as it plattered on his face and chest.
An otter-path lay across the next bend, and he followed it to the middle of the field, where he hesitated. Strange smells lay in the dew. He scraped at a place in the grass where paper had been rammed by a pole, near orange peel covered by a loose tuft. He walked on, nose to ground, and smelt man, where hobnailed boots had pressed the turf and crushed cigarette-ends. He turned back, and would have gone straight to water if he had not heard the cry of a bitch-otter at the far end of the path. Hu-ee-ee-ic! he answered, and ran along to find her. Near the middle of the meadow he stopped as though he had trod on a gin. The taint of hounds lay thick with the scent of otter. Grasses were smeared with blood and spittle. His hair rose on his back. He blew through open mouth, swung his head about as though looking for hounds, and was gone, silent as his low moon shadow.
