Again the deer tried to lead her enemy away, trotting off a few paces and turning to look back with large, questioning eyes. The big cat merely sat upright and yawned as if bored by the proceedings. The brocket retraced her steps, but the Jaguar seemed not to notice and began to wash one of her massive paws. By this time the deer was thoroughly aroused; she grunted and stamped her feet and pivoted this way and that. Suma, while feigning indifference, eagerly watched each movement and when the brocket, finally, frantic with apprehension made one of her quick turns the Jaguar glided forward a few steps and sprang. Like a flash she catapulted through the air; there was the gleam of white fangs and when the jaws crunched together they closed upon the neck of the unfortunate deer, crushing the vertebra. A second swift lunge below the shoulder and the long teeth had penetrated the heart. The deer, with a startled gasp staggered forward a step and dropped. Suma eagerly lapped up the red pool forming on the wet leaves, purring with satisfaction and then fell upon her victim with a savage relish, for not in days had she eaten.
Long before the gory feast was completed the fawn, becoming impatient at its mother’s non-return, left the clump of arums, green leaves, wide as an elephant’s ear, not ten yards away and ambled up unsuspiciously to within a few feet of the great cat where it stood and gazed with wide, innocent eyes upon the fearful scene before it. Suma paid no attention to the little creature, even when it came a step nearer and bleated plaintively, for she had enough before her to satisfy her hunger. And when the Jaguar had eaten her fill she carefully cleansed her face and paws and started toward the river to drink before returning to the windfall. The fawn followed, so she increased her pace, hopelessly outdistancing the little creature and leaving it to the mercy of the next marauder that chanced to pass that way. Without the guidance of its mother it was a forlorn and pathetic little object left to drift aimlessly through the rain-soaked forest with its numerous watchful eyes and alert ears. Somehow, the other creatures sensed the fawn’s helplessness and the news soon spread among them. Shadowy forms appeared where there should have been none. And the awe-inspiring Suma had scarcely succeeded in shaking the dainty little sprite off her trail when it met an untimely end from an unexpected quarter.
A family of great owls had been following the jungle tragedy from the black trees, with large, glowing eyes. And when the proper moment arrived they swooped down with noiseless wings like spirits from a shadow world. Monsters of fury they were, stabbing and rending with needle-sharp claws and hooked beaks that clattered; tearing at eye and throat and flank until the poor fawn succumbed to the terrific attack. Then they fretted and quarrelled among themselves, grunting and bowing, and striking at one another with arched wings as they hopped around their victim. The commotion attracted a pack of five short-tailed, dog-like creatures which rushed upon the scene and drove the owls back to their sphere in the tree tops, while they cleaned up the remains.
When Suma again emerged from her lair, two nights later, she started in a different direction. Never did she return to a kill the second time or hunt on two successive occasions in the same region.
Unless she remained to ward off the hungry advances of a host of other creatures there would never be enough of her victims left to come back for; and even if there had been, one short day’s time in the hot, steaming jungle atmosphere sufficed to cause the flesh to decay. Suma had ideas of her own about spending the days away from her proper rendezvous; and as for carrion, she never failed to give it a wide berth.
As to her hunting instincts, there were several reasons why a region should be shunned after one of its denizens had been slain. A nightly raid in the same place might cause the creatures living in it either to become so wary that soon it would be impossible to secure any of them at all; or, they would be exterminated which was even worse. No! Suma obeyed well the impulse that guided her actions. By visiting a new district on each quest of food the game was not too greatly disturbed and its numbers or existence was not imperilled.
Nor was this instinct confined to the Jaguar alone. The other flesh-eating animals also heeded it. And the wild tribes that inhabited the wilderness knew from bitter experience that it was best to conserve their food supply and that to waste today was to want tomorrow. It was only when men who professed some degree of civilization appeared on the scene that the wild things found existence impossible; and the more advanced the men the greater the slaughter. They showed an insatiable lust for killing—under one pretext or another; but always they killed, with guns and rifles and—from a safe distance.
On her second food-hunt since the arrival of Warruk, the cub, Suma essayed to visit the margin of the swollen, raging river where the fat capybaras lived in the dense cane brakes. The great creatures, like hundred-pound guinea pigs, were rancid eating, it is true, but this was in a measure counterbalanced by the fact that to capture them required no excessive effort. Both by day and by night they were very much in evidence gnawing tirelessly at the tough canes and when the stems were finally severed they squatted complacently and munched the broad, ribbon-like leaves. One wondered when, if ever, they slept; and why, in the midst of such an abundance of food their appetites seemed never satisfied. Upon the first sign of danger they stopped eating only long enough to give vent to their resentment of the disturbance in a few guttural grunts; but once the spectre of disaster was swooping down upon them they made hurriedly for the water and dived with a loud splash. They were good swimmers, with only the head showing above the surface sending out a trail of V-shaped ripples that shimmered and sparkled if the sun shone, and on moonlit nights. Often, however, they swam under water to some nearby island reed-bed or to the security of a burrow beneath the overhanging bank.
The rain had stopped for one of those rare and all too brief intervals that broke the monotony of the sullen roar and the misery caused by a perpetually drenched skin when the Jaguar approached the fringe of tall, waving canes. Broad runways opened into the maze of stalks where the capybaras had gnawed their way through the dense growth and then hastily had turned back to start a new one—just as a woodpecker chiseling a hole through a wall and dismayed at seeing daylight ahead, leaves the laboriously excavated tunnel and quickly starts another.
The forest beyond the canes was an unknown world of lurking dangers. But the capybaras simply found it impossible to loose themselves from it. Always, at the most unexpected moment they came suddenly upon it looming before them like a sinister, black monster.