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It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril altogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not scorched or burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and plunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them.
Breed tacked back and forth across the wind, caught it again and held it, following the ribbon of scent upwind as easily as a man would follow a blazed trail through the timber. Two hundred yards from the start he sighted his prey, a fork-horn buck grazing slowly along under the trees.
If the menace was upwind and within reasonable distance, his nose detected it. At times the creak of saddle leather reached his ears or the sound of the horse's hoofs warned him. This hoof reading was a curious thing. Breed could not tell why he knew when a horse was ridden, but invariably he did.
Then he puts his head down and rushes madly in some direction, generally upwind. As he weighs about two tons, and can, in spite of his appearance, get over the ground nearly as fast as an ordinary horse, he is a truly imposing sight, especially since the innocent bystander generally happens to be upwind, and hence in the general path of progress.
The birds came upwind slowly, beating their way obliquely but steadily, long legs stretched out far behind the tail and swinging pendulum-like whenever a shift of ballast was needed. They apparently did not realize the unevenness of the wind, for when they backed air, ready to descend, a sudden gust would often undercut them and over they would go, legs, wings, and neck sprawling in mid-air.
Just at dusk Breed howled again and dropped down to the broken country at the base of the hills, skirting the flats and holding to the roughest brakes, then swung out across the rolling foothills. The wind soon brought him the message that coyotes were just ahead and he traced the scent upwind, anxious for the first sight of his former running mates.
Evidently, these men had had no training in battle tactics with blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But something from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground directly upwind from Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently. It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship.
The fact of the matter is that the rhinoceros is neither animated by the implacable man-destroying passion ascribed to him by the amateur hunter, nor is he so purposeless and haphazard in his rushes as some would have us believe. On being disturbed his instinct is to get away. He generally tries to get away in the direction of the disturbance, or upwind, as the case may be.
Upwind, not in order to prevent the Prairie-dog smelling her, but so that she could smell him, which came to the same thing. As soon as the Prairie-dog sat up with some food in his hand she froze into a statue.
In either event it might prove meat for Sheeta, and so the wary feline stalked by a circuitous route, upon soft, padded feet that gave forth no sound, until the circling aasvogel and his intended prey were upwind.
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