XIII
IN THE BOBCAT’S DEN
THROUGH tangled jungles of wild blackberry vines and tall brake crept a tawny, mottled figure with stealthily velvet tread. At a distance the creature resembled a tiger, but following close behind its padding footsteps into the open, it appeared somewhat less formidable. Its head was round, but flattened at the top of its skull, and its jaws were beautifully marked and lined out with dark streakings. Its ears were fairly long and tufted, resembling in this respect its near relative, the dreaded Canadian lynx; its greenish, watchful eyes were alert and glittered savagely as it halted close to the edge of the swamp, where it was bound for its prey, but it had scented the presence of others, and had stopped to reconnoiter.
The solitary prowler was a full-grown, male bay lynx, commonly known in the northern country as the bob, or wildcat. This great cat resembles closely in its habits the tiger of the jungles, and loves best the dark, secret places of the forest; so, when the whine of the lumbermen’s saws breaks the silence of the woods, the great tawny cat is ever seeking new dens, going back farther into the wilderness.
Already had the frost touched the maples in the low-lying grounds, and the forest trails were deep with fallen, yellow beech leaves, so that the comings and goings of all the wild things were rendered doubly silent.
In the heart of the swamp, for which the bobcat was headed, lay a sluggish pond, its waters black with rotting water weeds, and alive with catfish and pickerel. Close in the edge of the tall reeds lay an old flat-bottomed boat in which were two boys, who were fishing for catfish. Already, back in the dense forest surrounding the pond, it was growing black with coming night shadows, but the boys hadn’t noticed it, because the fish were biting splendidly, as they always do just after sunset, leaping right out of the water with sudden splashes, in the center of the pond. Over the farther side of the pond a great night-bird was fishing, sailing low and screaming its uncanny cry as it dove after a fish. One of the boys suddenly noticed it, for the cry made him shiver.