CHAPTER III
The Terror of Claws and Fangs.
When Suma, the Jaguar, driven from the dismal wastes of the pantenal country by the encroaching floods of the rainy season reached the higher, forested region skirting the Andean foothills, she entered upon a wild orgy of terrorism and slaughter.
Her instinct gratified, Suma retired to the cavity in the cottonwood while the torrential rains fell with a monotonous roar, and the craneflies with their lacy, whirring wings formed a curtain in the entrance to lend sanctity to the inner chamber.
Ordinarily, Suma did not destroy wantonly; she killed for food only or in self-defense; or, in resentment of the too familiar advances or the indifference of some one of the less intelligent creatures that had not yet learned to respect her power and acknowledge her sovereignty in the jungle. But, the present was not an ordinary occasion, for soon Warruk, as the Indians on the Ichilo River called the Jaguar cub, was to make his appearance in the big world; and it was but for his comfort and safety that Suma provided.
After a three days’ retirement the great cat emerged from the seclusion of her dark retreat, hungry and ferocious but with a stealth and caution well calculated to evade any prying eyes that might attempt to observe her actions from the treetops and surmise their meaning.
A puff, like smoke, from the entrance to the cavity announced her coming; but it was only the madly dancing cloud of craneflies clearing the passage at her approach.
The rain was falling with a steady drone from a sky of unbroken, cheerless gray, and rivulets of water trickled from the drooping vegetation. Mosses and ferns, revived by the superabundance of moisture had sprung up on the decaying trunks and branches of the uprooted trees, pushing their feathery leaflets through the blanket of creepers and forming a dense, soggy layer cold and clammy to the touch and treacherous underfoot. But Suma knew her domicile well and passed rapidly and surefootedly over the interlocking tree skeletons and soon reached the level forest floor.