Thus did Solomon hold the fort, and remain on as undisputed keeper of the ridge. Never could he be trapped or shot, until finally the patience of the farmers was at an end, and they resolved to rally and have a grand hunt for the lynx family; but even then they failed to catch him, and this is how it happened.
One night that fall, Solomon and his family had been out upon one of their bold raids. Right into a farmer’s barn-yard Solomon ventured this time, while his mate waited for him farther up the trail. When he met her he dragged after him a fine, fat sheep, and together they made their way to the den to share the great feast with the waiting cubs. When it was finished, they all curled themselves up for a long, gluttonous sleep, which would last probably until their pressing hunger again awakened them.
Gradually a brooding silence settled over mountain and swamp. The moon was setting and hung, a slim crescent, just over the edge of the dark spruces. Always, before dawn, there comes a hush, when even the owls and frogs are quiet, and the hermit thrush has finished her all night lullaby. It is as if all Nature waited; waited for the birth of a new day.
Then down from the lime ledge, just above Solomon’s den, slipped a dark, lithe figure, slim, with small, sinister eyes; it half-scrambled, half-clawed its way down to a level with the den of the lynx. It moved leisurely but surely, in and out among the tall, rank ferns, threading its way with unerring scent, the scent being fresh meat. Like a shadow, the long, slim body stole inside the bone-strewn den of the lynx, nosing about among the gnawed, discarded bones of the sheep in disdain, and uttering a hissing, baffled growl of disappointment.
Suddenly a low, rumbling growl of warning came from the half-awakened lynx, who had somehow scented the presence of an intruder in the den, but the growl did not frighten off the small, slim visitor, who must be very brave indeed to face Solomon. The eyes of the lynx, mere slits of sleepiness, gradually opened wider and wider. He had caught sight of the stranger, and now thoroughly awake he bared his teeth in an ugly snarl of rage at being disturbed from his slumbers.
The next instant, like a flash of lightning, before Solomon knew how to prepare himself for attack, the slim, dark body had sprung straight for his throat. In vain the lynx shook and scratched and turned himself about. He could not rid himself of the small dark body which had fastened itself in his throat and clung and clung. Gradually the eyes of Solomon lost all luster, and he sank back limp and dead. While all this had been going on the mother lynx and her cubs had awakened, and the old lynx, intent only upon saving the cubs, had stolen off like a shadow, the cubs following her, into the darkness. They had deliberately deserted Solomon in his extremity. Off over the mountain the old lynx led the cubs, and did not stop until she had hidden them in a safe retreat miles away, upon another spur of the mountain, and she never ventured back to Tamarack Ridge again.
When the hunters found the lynx den, they also found all that remained of Solomon lying cold and stark in the edge of the den. And one of the men remarked:
“Only a weasel could do that. The lynx met his match that time.”
Thus ended the long, terrifying reign of Solomon the lynx, and the den beneath the dark, overhanging boughs of the tamarack is now without its keeper.
