A mink crouched on the stream bank, busily eating a fourteen-inch trout that it had surprised in the shallows. Sure of its own powers, fearing nothing, the mink gave no attention to anything save the meal it had caught. Finished, it licked its chops and turned to stare at the tall grass in which Frosty lay.
The mink knew and had known since the kitten came that Frosty was there, for its nose had told it. A bloody little creature, ordinarily it might have amused itself by killing the kitten. But a full belly can make even a mink feel good, and after a moment, it turned to travel downstream.
Frosty stole forward to find the trout's tail, head and fins. The epicurean mink had chosen only the choice portions and left this carrion for any scavenger that might come. But it was good and it dulled Frosty's hunger. His meal ended, he washed up, then and went back into the meadow.
No longer hungry and thus no longer finding it necessary to devote his attention to finding food, the kitten could concentrate on the other creatures that had come into the meadow. He sat on a hillock to watch a fox hunt mice.
It was a big, sleek dog fox, with a mate and cubs back in a hillside den, and it made not the slightest effort to stalk its quarry. Instead, it walked openly, head up and ears alert. When it heard a mouse in a grass-thatched runway, the fox reared, to come stiffly down with both front paws. Five times it reared, and five times it pinned the mouse it wanted and extricated it from the grass beneath which it was pinned.
Suddenly the fox smelled Frosty and whirled. It came trotting, its attitude more one of aroused curiosity than hostility. The kitten was something new, and before the fox took any further action, it wanted to know exactly what this strange creature was. Its head curving gracefully toward Frosty, it stopped four feet away.
Trapped and knowing it, the kitten made ready to fight. He laid his ears back and framed a snarl on his jaws. The growl that rumbled from his chest was the most ferocious of which he was capable. Looking more amused than cautious, the fox extended an exploring paw. Frosty struck and missed. He was no match for this veteran of the wilderness. The fox circled and the kitten turned with him.