[Illustration: Acorns]
CHAPTER VII
THE CAVE TIGER
One morning not long after the lion hunt, Thorn and his grandfather started off to the stone yard. They soon came to the deep forest where they could not see far ahead of them, because the beeches and oaks and chestnuts grew close together, and under the branches there was a thick tangle of low bushes.
Old Flint watched carefully as he led the way through the woods. He listened to every sound, and looked often behind him. Farther along, the ground was more open; and from a hill they looked far away over wide level land. Herds of horses and bison were grazing there, and packs of wolves skulked through the edge of the forest. They waited to spring upon the animals that should stray from the herds.
Passing on, old Flint came upon the body of a rhinoceros partly eaten, and he stopped and looked anxiously around.
"This is the work of a tiger," he said; "and he cannot be far off, for the meat is fresh."
Flint peered through the bushes; but the tiger was not in sight, so he quickly cut meat from the rhinoceros and walked on slowly.
"The tiger may be somewhere near, sleeping. Keep a sharp look-out, boy; he is yellow with dark stripes, just the color of the dry grass, and you can walk almost onto him before you see him. No animal can hide better than he, and none can walk the forest paths with less noise from his padded feet."
They had not gone much farther when old Flint stopped and, catching his breath; stared into the shadows of a tree. Clutching Thorn's shoulder, he pointed to the spot without saying a word. There on a limb, asleep, beautiful in his tawny skin and easy grace, lay the great animal. Thorn looked while his heart beat fast. Never before had he seen anything that so held his eye. He would have liked to stay and watch him—to see him walk, to see his great claws and teeth, and his wild eyes. But Flint hurried him off, and without a sound they left the place. Not till he had put miles between himself and the tiger did Flint shake off a feeling of terror, and speak in answer to Thorn's question:
"How does the tiger get things to eat?"
"He steals to the river bank where the shade is deepest," said the old man, recalling many a sight of the crouching beast. "There, on some over-hanging limb or rock, he waits for deer or horse or any other animal to come to drink. Then from his hiding place, with an angry snarl, he springs upon the back of his prey."
"Oh, many a time I have seen him," continued old Flint, thinking of past years; "for when I was a boy, my father's cave was in a high cliff, close to the river. A little way below, there was a place where the animals came to drink. And often I have felt the hair rise on my head as I heard the cry of some wounded animal, and saw it rush away with a yellow patch clinging to its neck."
