Ancestry now told Lad that there is perhaps no more murderously dangerous foe than an angry wildcat. Ancestry also told him a wolf's one chance of certain victory in such a contest. Ancestry's aid was not required, to tell him the mortal peril awaiting this human child who had so grievously and causelessly tormented him. But the great loyal heart, in this stark moment, took no thought of personal grudges. There was but one thing to do,—one perilous, desperate chance to take; if the child were to be saved.
The wildcat sprang.
Such a leap could readily have carried it across double the space which lay between it and Cyril. But not one-third of that space was covered in the lightning pounce.
From the upper air,—apparently from nowhere,—a huge shaggy body launched itself straight downward. As unerringly as the swoop of an eagle, the down-whizzing bulk flew. It smote the leaping wildcat, in mid-flight.
A set of mighty jaws,—jaws that could crack a beef-bone as a man cracks a filbert,—clove deep and unerringly into the cat's back, just behind the shoulders. And those jaws flung all their strength into the ravening grip.
A squall,—hideous in its unearthly clangor,—split the night silences. The maddened cat whirled about, spitting and yowling; and set its foaming teeth in the dog's fur-armored shoulder. But before the terrible curved claws could be called into action, Lad's rending jaws had done their work upon the spine.
To the verge of the narrow ledge the two combatants had rolled in their unloving embrace. Its last lurch of agony carped the stricken wildcat over the edge and out the ninety-foot drop into the ravine. Lad was all-but carried along with his adversary. He clawed wildly with his toes for a purchase on the smooth cliff wall; over which his hindquarters had slipped. For a second he hung, swaying, above the abyss.
Cyril, scared into semi-insanity by sight of the sudden brief battle, had caught up a stick from the rubbish at his feet. With this, not at all knowing what he did, he smote the struggling Lad with every atom of his feeble force, over the head.
Luckily for the gallant dog, the stick was rotten. It broke, in the blow; but not before its impact had well-nigh destroyed Lad's precarious balance.
One clawing hindfoot found toe-room in a flaw of rock. A tremendous heave of all his strained muscles; and Lad was scrambling to safety on the ledge.