The Way of the Wild

by F. St. Mars

However many years that lion had lived, to kill mercilessly, Heaven alone knows; but how on earth he had contrived to avoid for some time being equally mercilessly killed by hyenas, or wild hogs, Heaven and himself alone knew, too. He was a very, very old lion, a derelict of a lion, a shadow of a ghost of one, mangy, tottering, toothless—come down to eat snakes killed by others, even by jackals.

Then the jackal went away, dejected and disgusted. He was honestly proud of his slaying of that python.

It was the biggest screw-up of courage he had ever accomplished in his life, and to be done out of his rewarding big feast by that purring skeleton of a king of beasts! It was too much even for his pessimistic philosophy.

"Yaaa-ya-ya-ya-ya!" he howled, with his nose pointed to the brazen sun, and melted away among the accursed thorn-scrub with a look about him that said, as plainly as words, "And that's what comes of hunting in daylight."

The jackal, after a long skirmish and a drink, retired homewards towards sunset, when suddenly, from a tuft of grass ahead of him, a shadow shot and vanished. He picked up the trail at once, diagnosed it as that of a hare, and gave chase.

It was a fine chase, characterized by every aspect of first-class trailing, and carried along at such a speed that the quarry never got a chance to stop and get its second wind. Indeed, the quarry never had a chance to stop at all, until it was stopped, and the manner of that happening was strange.

Whether designedly driven, or whether by chance, one cannot tell, but the fact remains that the hare took a "line of country" which, if persisted in, would lead her close past the jackal's lair, or, rather, his wife's lair. This was important—for the jackal.

Once, indeed, our hunter all but overran a small—but quite big enough—boa-constrictor, which must have aimed to drop from a tree upon the hare passing below, and missed. It was in an even more evil temper, in consequence, than snakes usually are, and struck at the jackal with its head and shut mouth. The jackal quietly side-stepped, snapped, missed, and made off after his quarry, and about five hundred yards farther on he came up with "puss"—dead.

The jackal sat on his bushy tail, stuck out his fore-feet straight, and stopped as quickly as ever he could. Then he snarled, and full right had he to snarl.

The hare was lying on her back, weakly kicking out the last of her life with her hindlegs, and a stocky, short-nosed, evil, leering, side-striped jackal was standing over her. He had done the deed. And our black-back knew that side-stripe, had met him before. The two families lived only a few hundred yards apart, and it was Mrs. Side-stripe who was responsible for our friend's wife's crippled condition at that moment. This was a typical side-striper, one of the creeping, hunting-by-surprise-and-pounce sort, and it may be that he had never run down any prey worth speaking about in his life. In a way, he was the very opposite from our black-back, who was mostly legs, and a bit of a sportsman, and, I believe, really delighted in a good ringing hunt. Wherefore there was not much cause for surprise at the bitter blood-feud that had gradually grown up between them, till now things had come pretty well to a head.