XXIV
THE KEEPER OF TAMARACK RIDGE
SOLOMON of old was wise and old in years. So too was Solomon, the old gray lynx, the keeper of Tamarack Ridge. Crafty and cruel too was this Solomon, and feared and dreaded by most of his wild neighbors on the ridge, and also by all the dwellers of the swamp below the ridge.
Solomon’s thick coat was hoary, of a yellowish brown, and mottled and shabby, and his large round head terminated in sharp, pointed ears, set off by coarse, tassel-like tufts of black hair, which gave him a sly, sinister expression. Although Solomon the lynx was half the size of a full-grown panther, he could creep through the forest so silently that the soft pad, pad of his feet upon the soft mosses, and the time of his passing was known to few. He never extended any polite courtesies to anything he met, for his disposition was so ugly and mean that should he chance to meet a bobcat or a porcupine, he would always bare his cruel teeth in an ugly snarl, and slink away into the shadows. He mated with none but his own family, two interesting kitten cubs, and their mother.