A huge four-foot basswood had gone the way of all trees. Death had been
generous--had sent the three warnings: it was the biggest of its kind,
its children were grown up, it was hollow. The wintry blast that sent
it down had broken it across and revealed a great hole where should
have been its heart. A long wooden cavern in the middle of a sunny
opening, it now lay, and presented an ideal home for a Lynx when she
sought a sheltered nesting-place for her coming brood.
Old was she and gaunt, for this was a year of hard times for the
Lynxes. A Rabbit plague the autumn before had swept away their main
support; a winter of deep snow and sudden crusts had killed off nearly
all the Partridges; a long wet spring had destroyed the few growing
coveys and had kept the ponds and streams so full that Fish and Frogs
were safe from their armed paws, and this mother Lynx fared no better
than her kind.
The little ones--half starved before they came--were a double drain,
for they took the time she might have spent in hunting.
The Northern Hare is the favorite food of the Lynx, and in some years
she could have killed fifty in one day, but never one did she see this
season. The plague had done its work too well.
One day she caught a Red-squirrel which had run into a hollow log that
proved a trap. Another day a fetid Blacksnake was her only food. A day
was missed, and the little ones whined piteously for their natural food
and failing drink. One day she saw a large black animal of unpleasant
but familiar smell. Swiftly and silently she sprang to make attack. She
struck it once on the nose, but the Porcupine doubled his head under,
his tail flew up, and the mother Lynx was speared in a dozen places
with the little stinging javelins. She drew them all with her teeth,
for she had "learned Porcupine" years before, and only the hard push of
want would have made her strike one now.
A Frog was all she caught that day. On the next, as she ranged the
farthest woods in a long, hard hunt, she heard a singular calling
voice. It was new to her. She approached it cautiously, up wind, got
many new odors and some more strange sounds in coming. The loud, clear,
rolling call was repeated as the mother Lynx came to an opening in the
forest. In the middle of it were two enormous muskrat or beaver-houses,
far bigger than the biggest she ever before had seen. They were made
partly of logs and situated, not in a pond, but on a dry knoll. Walking
about them were a number of Partridges, that is, birds like Partridges,
only larger and of various colors, red, yellow, and white.
She quivered with the excitement that in a man would have been called
buck-fever. Food--food--abundance of food, and the old huntress sank to
earth. Her breast was on the ground, her elbows above her back, as she
made stalk, her shrewdest, subtlest stalk; one of those Partridges she
must have at any price; no trick now must go untried, no error in this
hunt; if it took hours--all day--she must approach with certainty to
win before the quarry took to flight.
Only a few bounds it was from wood shelter to the great rat-house, but
she was an hour in crawling that small space. From stump to brush, from
log to bunch of grass she sneaked, a flattened form, and the Partridges
saw her not. They fed about, the biggest uttering the ringing call that
first had fallen on her ear.
Once they seemed to sense their peril, but a long await dispelled the
fear. Now they were almost in reach, and she trembled with all the
eagerness of the hunting heart and the hungry maw. Her eye centred on a
white one not quite the nearest, but the color seemed to hold her gaze.
There was an open space around the rat-house; outside that were tall
weeds, and stumps were scattered everywhere. The white bird wandered
behind these weeds, the red one of the loud voice flew to the top of
the rat-mound and sang as before. The mother Lynx sank lower yet. It
seemed an alarm note; but no, the white one still was there; she could
see its feathers gleaming through the weeds. An open space now lay
about. The huntress, flattened like an empty skin, trailed slow and
silent on the ground behind a log no thicker than her neck; if she
could reach that tuft of brush she could get unseen to the weeds and
then would be near enough to spring. She could smell them now--the rich
and potent smell of life, of flesh and blood, that set her limbs
a-tingle and her eyes a-glow.
The Partridges still scratched and fed; another flew to the high top,
but the white one remained. Five more slow-gliding, silent steps, and
the Lynx was behind the weeds, the white bird shining through; she
gauged the distance, tried the footing, swung her hind legs to clear
some fallen brush, then leaped direct with all her force, and the white
one never knew the death it died, for the fateful gray shadow dropped,
the swift and deadly did their work, and before the other birds could
realize the foe or fly, the Lynx was gone, with the white bird
squirming in her jaws.
Uttering an unnecessary growl of inborn ferocity and joy she bounded
into the forest, and bee-like sped for home. The last quiver had gone
from the warm body of the victim when she heard the sound of heavy feet
ahead. She leaped on a log. The wings of her prey were muffling her
eyes, so she laid the bird down and held it safely with one paw. The
sound drew nearer, the bushes bent, and a Boy stepped into view. The
old Lynx knew and hated his kind. She had watched them at night, had
followed them, had been hunted and hurt by them. For a moment they
stood face to face. The huntress growled a warning that was also a
challenge and a defiance, picked up the bird and bounded from the log
into the sheltering bushes. It was a mile or two to the den, but she
stayed not to eat till the sunlit opening and the big basswood came to
view; then a low "prr-prr" called forth the little ones to revel with
their mother in a plenteous meal of the choicest food.