After all it was only a miniature sound, really little more than a high-pitched squeak. Yet in that unfathomable silence it cracked like a rifle. In one second of thought Broken Fang would have identified the sound, would have kept his poise, and a moment later would have sprung with fatal power into the flock of sheep. Yet that second of thought did not come in time. The impulse to his muscles, the sudden explosion of his tightly drawn nerves had the speed of light itself. It was only a little pika—a rock rabbit, as the mountaineers call them,—such as the puma had killed the day before. It would have been surpassing poetic justice for it to have been the mate of the small, gray creature that had died so recently in his talons, squealing for the mother of his litter to come back to him. And his sharp squeal was just enough, and no more, to put high explosives under the sheep hunt. The cougar’s nerves had been pitched to the highest key, and the muscular reaction to that shrill sound could not be restrained. His paw lashed out: the little rodent leaped from beneath it. And at the same instant he snarled. Few living creatures can strike in silence. One of them is the mighty elephant, most intellectual and, of course, majestic of all the beasts. This jungle king can lunge out with a resistless force and still keep the tremendous silence of the sphinx. But the stallion screams when he strikes with his lashing hoofs. The elk bellows, and even the venerable, dignified old bear has a savage growl at his lips as he slashes his terrible paws at his foe. The pent-up passions do not find sufficient escape in the blow itself, and a vocal utterance usually accompanies it. As Broken Fang struck at the rodent, his short, terrible snarl rang through the still air. The sheep needed no further warning. They sprang forward as if the sound had been a great hand that hurled them, without an instant’s delay. Broken Fang caught himself then, snarled and sprang among them; but he was a mere fraction of an instant too late. The flock was divided—Argali and some of the ewes and immature rams circled about and dashed up the rocks at one side. The others—Spot and two young ewes—were cut off from this avenue of escape, and headed down the steep wall of the mountain. The way of the bighorn is the climbing trail—to flee to the heights where the ordinary run of hunters cannot follow. But Spot was obliged to take another course. Broken Fang leaped after him. At first he ran only in anger and frenzy, for his instincts told him plainly and surely that it is usually the height of folly for a cougar to attempt to overtake the hoofed creatures in an open chase. But he had been cheated too many times; and his self-control had fallen further from him than the bottom of the gorge. The sheep raced on lightly, easily, and Broken Fang filled the canyons with his snarls.