Almost ready to give up and go somewhere else, Firestar stopped trying to track down prey to give Hutch and Patch their first lesson in the hunter’s crouch and the right way to stalk. Hutch concentrated very hard, but found it difficult to get his haunches into the proper position, while Patch had it almost right the first time. Of course, the rogue cats had been hunting for themselves since they were kits; they would need to learn only the skills of hunting in a group before they were as good as any forest warrior.
“Okay,” Firestar meowed. “I want you to imagine that there’s prey under that gorse bush over there.” He waved his tail to show them which bush he meant. “Let me see you stalk up to it.”
All three cats set off. Watching them critically, Firestar admired Cherry’s graceful, controlled prowl; she had learned a lot since she first tracked him in the undergrowth downstream. Patch was slinking along with his belly fur brushing the ground, and even Hutch seemed to have gotten his paws under control.
“Keep going; you’re doing great,” Firestar encouraged them.
Suddenly Patch sprang up with a hiss of astonishment.
One paw flashed out, and Firestar spotted a small brown shape as it was tossed in the air. Patch grabbed it as it fell to the ground again. He turned back to Firestar with a mouse dangling limply from his jaws.
“Well done!” Firestar meowed. “First catch to you.”
“I think it was half-asleep,” Patch admitted, dropping the mouse. “It never had a chance.”
“Fresh-kill is fresh-kill, however you catch it.” Firestar began to scrape at the ground with his hind paws. “We’ll bury it now, and take it back with us when we’re ready.”
Which won’t be long, he promised himself. He didn’t like this part of the territory; it was too quiet, too bare of prey, and something about the huge Twoleg barn made him uncomfortable.
“Let’s see your crouches again,” he mewed.
Hutch had drawn a little way ahead of Cherry; the tabby kittypet had nearly reached the gorse bush when a squirrel started up from underneath the branches and raced for the safety of a clump of beech trees. Startled, Hutch waited a heartbeat too long before chasing after it.
“I’ll get it!” Cherry yowled, streaking past Hutch with her tail streaming out.
Hutch halted, looking bewildered.
The squirrel reached the tree with Cherry hard on its paws and swarmed up the trunk until it reached the lowest branch.
“Got you!” Cherry hurled herself into the air.
But she had misjudged the leap. A mouse-length short, her paws struck a clump of leaves and she hung there, clawing frantically, kicking her hind legs and scattering scraps of leaf everywhere, until she managed to haul herself up onto the branch. Meanwhile the squirrel had vanished among the leaves farther up the tree.
“Mouse dung!” Cherry spat.
Firestar strolled to the foot of the tree and looked up at her. Privately he thought the young tortoiseshell’s failure would do her no harm—she needed to learn not to show off—but he wouldn’t say anything to upset her. She looked frustrated enough.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No! Stupid squirrel—I should have caught it.”
“It was my fault.” Hutch padded up beside Firestar. “I should have been a bit quicker.”
“Don’t worry.” Firestar touched his shoulder with the tip of his tail. “This is only your first lesson. You’re doing fine.”
Hutch looked unconvinced. “I feel like I’m letting you all down. No cat will want to hunt for me if I can’t hunt for myself.”
Firestar let his tail rest on the tabby tom’s shoulder for a moment longer. “That’s not how a Clan works,” he explained.
“You’ll be allowed your share of the fresh-kill pile like any other warrior. And you will hunt for yourself, and the rest of us too, before very long.” Looking from Hutch’s disappointed face to Cherry’s frustrated one, he turned and signaled to Patch with his tail. “Fetch that mouse,” he called. “We’ll see if there’s more prey nearer the cliff top.”
Just as Firestar had hoped, there was better hunting in the bushes that edged the cliff. Before very long, the patrol was able to return to the gorge with a good haul of prey. Hutch was bursting with pride at bringing down his first sparrow, with a leap that proved the tabby kittypet bore SkyClan blood.
His jaws full of fresh-kill, Firestar led the way down into the gorge. The sun was up, and warm, honey-colored light pooled on the rocks and dazzled on the smooth curve of water where it poured out of the darkness. Firestar and Sandstorm had kept a small fresh-kill pile near the entrance to the warriors’ cave, but that wouldn’t do now. They would need to look for a sheltered spot near the waterside, where every cat could come and eat.
As he padded down the trail, Firestar saw that Sandstorm and her patrol had also returned. He paused, stiffening. Close to the Rockpile, Sandstorm and Scratch stood facing each other with their neck fur fluffed out, as if they were quarreling. Leaf and Boris looked on anxiously, while Clover, at the water’s edge, gathered her kits to her.
Firestar bounded down the last few tail-lengths of the trail. Sandstorm had deposited her patrol’s fresh-kill under an overhang at the bottom of the Rockpile; he added his own before turning to the two cats.
“And I’m telling you that’s not the way it’s done,” Sandstorm growled, her green eyes furious. “In a Clan, the elders and the nursing queens always eat first.”
Scratch lashed his tail. “That’s mouse-brained! It’s the warriors who catch the prey!”
“There’s no need to argue,” Clover interrupted in a soft voice. “I don’t mind. You can eat first. There’s plenty for every cat.”
“That’s not the point,” Firestar intervened.
Sandstorm’s head whipped around; she had obviously been so intent on Scratch that she hadn’t heard Firestar approach. When she saw him, the fur on her shoulders began to lie flat. “Thank StarClan you’re here! Tell this stupid furball—”
Firestar lifted his tail to silence her. Hurling insults wasn’t going to help. To Scratch he mewed, “Sandstorm’s right. Just because warriors are strong enough to hunt doesn’t mean they have the right to eat first.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Scratch protested, his green eyes wide with indignation. “The Clan depends on its warriors. They should be fed first so that they’re always strong enough to deal with unexpected trouble.” With a hostile glance at Sandstorm he added, “Some cats won’t listen.”
To Firestar’s relief, Sandstorm didn’t respond. Brushing her pelt reassuringly, he padded forward to face the ginger tom. “Yes, it’s important for a Clan to have strong warriors.
But the warrior code isn’t just based on what is practical.
Honor matters equally as much. Elders and nursing queens must be shown respect, because without them the Clan wouldn’t survive.”
“SkyClan hasn’t survived,” Scratch muttered darkly.
“True, but that’s no reason to cast the warrior code aside.
Whatever happened to the original SkyClan cats”—Firestar wished that he knew what had happened to SkyClan, but there was no time to think of that now—“it wasn’t the fault of the elders or the nursing queens. We must continue to honor them.”
Scratch hesitated. Then his head whipped around and he glared at Clover. “Okay. Eat.”
Looking very embarrassed, Clover darted past him to the fresh-kill pile, snatched a blackbird, and carried it to where her kits were crouched by the side of the water.
Sandstorm let out a sigh, and padded off to say something quietly to Leaf, who rested her tail tip sympathetically on the ginger she-cat’s shoulder. Firestar signaled to the other cats to come and take prey from the pile, though he didn’t have much appetite himself. He couldn’t help wondering how many more arguments there would be before Scratch and the other cats really understood the warrior code.