HOW KIOPO FOUGHT THE LYNX
When at length he opened his eyes, the sun had sunk below the hills. He rose slowly to his feet. He was so stiff that, when he stretched and shook himself, he gave a little yelp of pain. Then he sat down on his haunches and considered. On three sides of him stretched the lake; on the fourth, the forest, darkening in the evening gloom. Somewhere far out in the lake, a fish leaped with a splash. Kiopo turned his head uneasily towards the sound. It seemed to make the immense water more vast and lovely than before. He dreaded the lake now: it was a horror he would never forget. And because he sat there, still surrounded by the horror, and because the loneliness and longing that was in his heart for the little brother, swept over him all at once, he suddenly lifted his nose to the sky, and poured forth a wild, despairing howl, followed by another, and yet another.
Those desolate notes sent a message and a thrill far through the neighbourhood, till they died among the whispering reeds on the furthest shore. In the secret gloom of the forest, the startled creatures paused upon the trails. If Kiopo had wanted a good hunting, it was the worst mistake he could have made; for now every lesser animal within earshot would have warning of his presence, and know that a strange wolf was in a dangerous condition of unhappiness in the neighbourhood of the lake. Those who had intended feeding there, moved uneasily to safer pasture, and those who were hunters sought out more distant trails. So it happened that when, at last, Kiopo had finished his sorrow-making, and had entered the forest, he found it, to all appearances, emptied of its life.
He walked a little stiffly at first, but, by degrees, as his muscles worked, his body regained its suppleness, and very soon he was moving with the free swing which is particularly a wolf's.
The thought still uppermost in his mind was that of Dusty Star; but now he was utterly at a loss to know in which direction the Little Brother had gone. His long swim in those cold waters where he had so nearly met his death, seemed to have confused his wits. He roamed up and down, now along the lake shore, now back into the woods with a vague hope that somewhere or other he would come upon something that should set him on the trail. Yet although his nose worked incessantly, he smelt nothing but the darkness filled with vague scents of invisible things, and the old smell of the trees. As he wandered about, his forces came slowly back to him, and, with his strength, his anger. If he had now recovered the trail of those who had stolen the Little Brother from him, he would have followed it furiously to the death. The anger that was in him burned like a dull fire. It needed only a very small thing to fan it to a blaze.
Nosing the ground as he went, he came suddenly upon a plain scent. It was one which he detested. It roused old memories, and an old slumbering hate. The trail led on below the spruces, and was fresh enough to be easily followed. And now Kiopo's whole being seemed to change. He no longer slouched along with a sulky and dejected air. His body stiffened and became alive. He carried himself as if on compressed springs. His eyes glowed with a dangerous fire. As he went on, the scent freshened with the odour he detested. The hair between his shoulders rose like a threat.
By the side of a big hemlock, the trail bent sharply to the right, leading over some rocky ground at the foot of a small hill. Upon the granite boulders covered with grey and orange lichen, the reflected light from the sunset sky lingered in a warm glow, as if they themselves were luminous. Kiopo moved with the utmost caution. He hardly seemed to walk so much as to slide over the uneven surface, with his belly close to the ground. Instinct, as much as sense, told him that the object of his hatred was now extremely near. In another moment, his eyes saw what hitherto he had only gathered with his nose.
Not twenty yards away lay the dead body of a deer; and, busily at work upon the carcass, crouched the form of a big, hunched-up animal with sharp, tufted ears. Those humped hind quarters, those hair-tufted ears surmounting the round, short-nosed head were familiar enough to Kiopo to tell him, apart even from the scent, that the humped ferocity before him was one of those ancient enemies of wolf and fox—the lynx.
The creature was so deeply engrossed in its occupation of feeding on the deer that at first it was totally unconscious of the wolf's presence. Tearing and biting at the freshly-killed and still-warm meat, it was enjoying its horrible feast without any fear of interruption. Kiopo drew his long body noiselessly nearer, foot by foot. He had almost reached a leaping distance, and was gathering his hind legs under him for a spring, when the lynx suddenly turned its head.
In an instant the great cat had realized the approaching danger and had snatched his whole body round so as to face the foe.
A more violent image of hate and defiance could not possibly be imagined. Its round, widely-spaced green eyes shone with a cold glitter that was terrifying in its unwinking glare. The tufted ears, laid back close along the head, gave the face an extraordinary evil look. Its entire body clung to the carcass of the deer, as if to proclaim its ownership of the kill, while the upper lip, curled back, uncovered the long fangs, clear white in the furry dusk of its face.
As the lynx crouched defiant on its prey, measuring its foe with its furious eyes, it gave a harsh, rasping snarl. But if the sound was intended to frighten Kiopo, it failed completely. Instead, this rasping challenge merely served to exasperate him still further. Without an instant's warning, his eyes blazing with fury, he leaped.
This swift attack took the big cat utterly by surprise. It set at defiance all lynx etiquette of warfare, which consisted in a good deal of growling, snarling, and hissing, coupled with stealthy crouchings and crawlings, and appalling stillness during which you glared at your enemy with bottled fury in your green eyes. But to observe none of these niceties of passion, and begin a fight without even a spit, was a thing utterly abominable to every well-bred cat.
Taken off its guard, the lynx sprang half a second too late. He gave a savage sweep with wicked claws, which scored Kiopo's flank; but the force of the wolf's spring, with 150 lbs of sheer weight behind it, fairly knocked him off his feet; while, at the very instant that he struck, the merciless steel trap that was Kiopo's jaw closed upon his neck. It was then that Kiopo showed his wisdom. If he had attempted to hold his enemy down, as he easily might have done by his weight alone, the lynx would have been able to bring into play his formidable hind feet, armed with their fearful claws, and have inflicted an awful punishment upon the wolf's stomach. It would have been like trying to subdue a furry mass of springs that spat, tore, slashed and bit in a humped bundle of madness. So, instead of running such a risk, Kiopo, exerted all the strength of his powerful neck, shoulders and jaws, and shook the lynx as the latter might have shaken a raccoon, and then flung him violently backwards.
The force of the jerk was so tremendous that the big cat was wrenched from his hold upon the deer, and turned upside down in the air; but he had barely touched the ground when, using the strong springs of his hind quarters, he rebounded like a ball. His object was to descend, cat-like, on the wolfs neck, and to claw out his eyes. But, swift as sight, Kiopo leaped again. Once more the trap snapped-to, and the lynx felt the wolf's teeth buried in his neck; while, as before, the skirmish ended in his being tossed violently backwards into the air.
The lynx was bewildered. He had fought wolves before, and with success, leaving the marks of his claws deep in their torn and bleeding flesh; but Kiopo's tactics were something fresh in his experience. Not only was there more cunning, but the strength and ferocity of half-a-dozen wolves seemed to unite in his foe's mighty frame.
On his second descent to earth, the lynx again made use of his strong hind-quarter springs. The only difference was that on this occasion he took care to re-bound into the air away from his antagonist instead of upon him! A clear five feet he bounded from the ground, landing on the side of a granite boulder. He was not allowed to remain. With a snarl that was more like a roar, Kiopo hurled himself at the rock.
As the lynx pulled himself up the boulder, the wolf reached his right flank, and inflicted a ripping wound. Screeching in rage and terror, the defeated lynx sprang over the boulder and disappeared into the trees.
And now Kiopo, triumphant, but by no means pacified, was able to glut his hunger upon the deer. It was the first full meal he had enjoyed for a long time, and he was not slow to make the most of it. Usually, after such a meal, he would have been inclined to settle himself down for a long sleep; but in his present enraged state of mind, sleep was impossible.
All the evening, and through the night, he traveled maddened, and raging, devoured with the lust to kill. Woe to any living creature that should fall across his path! Fortunately for themselves, the forest dwellers seemed to receive mysterious signals that madness was abroad. That night, the Spirit of the Wild Creatures did much business on the trails. East, west, south and north, the warnings travelled. Along the lake shore, through the decaying silence of the cedar swamps, into the whispering glooms of the spruce woods, the voiceless tidings went.
Hunting was understood—the plain, pitiless killing for food. It meant death, and terror, but at least it followed the ancient law of the wilderness that one killed in order to live. But this other thing that recognized no law, and hounded to death merely because of the madness in its heart—this nameless Terror that seemed, in the haunted darkness, to be everywhere at once—this they shrank from, trembling, as from something more deadly than even death itself. And so, realizing that it was Madness and not Hunger that went hunting down the trails, the forest-folk took heed to the tidings, and slunk into their lairs.