Rolla realized that the end had come. She determined on a last, desperate maneuver. She wheeled quickly as a spinning leaf. The momentum of the wolf-dog carried him hurtling onward. Rolla thrust out her down-stretched head. It caught Nero behind the shoulder. His great speed aided her. He staggered, his legs gave way, he fell.

Quick as a flash Rolla wheeled sharply to the left to cover. She crashed through a growth of privet. Suddenly she understood why the clearing was so strangely familiar. Faline, Geno and Gurri cowered silently before her.

Nero recovered quickly. He rose up smarting with added rage. The close-set privet still quivered from the passage of the roe-deer. With an enormous leap the wolf-dog cleared it. In place of one victim, four shivered before his bloodshot eyes.

In that moment Geno saved Rolla.

Quick as a flash, urged on by the spur of fear, he ran.

The others, not so quick to think perhaps, or nerveless from their panic, did not move. The wolf-dog disregarded them. His reaction, quick as Geno’s, was to pursue. Brown streak drew gray fury like a magnet.

Blindly through the trees ran Geno. With great leaps, with spinning turns, doubling and dodging, straight as an arrow whenever it was possible, he tried to elude the wolf-dog. Now his speed, once matched against the birds, came into play. His belly whitened with the snow it scraped, so stretched to speed he was. His breath flew behind him like the spume from a waterfall, freezing in the icy air to tiny points of smoke; but the chase could not last.

Geno was young. The blood of Bambi did not course through muscles mature enough to carry out its urgings. Moreover, Geno, like all the forest creatures, was weak from the winter’s scarcity, while Nero had never gone hungry.

Geno’s legs grew heavy. His heart seemed to swell within him. His lungs labored.

The wolf-dog’s legs seemed strong as tough, resilient yew, his heart as firm as stone, his lungs as steady as live oak. As Geno weakened, he became more powerful. His breath coursed through his nostrils with the sound of a summer storm. The lather round his jaws was like the scum on standing water.

“Help!” cried Geno. “Help!”

*  *  *

Meanwhile the privet by the clearing was filled with lamentation. Rolla sank wearily on the ground and bowed her head. Faline stood over her, crazed with fear and grief.

“You have sacrificed my son,” she cried in her bitterness.

“I didn’t know!” wailed Rolla.

“You didn’t know!” Faline’s eyes flashed. “The first law of motherhood is to protect the young. You are a murderess as surely as if you had killed him yourself.”

“Mother!” protested Gurri.

“Be quiet, child!” snapped Faline. “Let this creature realize the extent of her crime. Every time she looks at Boso let her remember the price we paid.”

Rolla stumbled to her feet with tired dignity.

“I’ll go,” she said. “Hate me if you gain relief from it. The fault is mine.”

Faline said nothing. She stood looking down the path that Geno had taken. Her heart was hard in her grief.