Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/94

 crouching lynx was still turned the other way, facing the newcomer. So for a half-minute he waited; and behind the black oak the stern eyes which had been watching there still watched, ablaze now with fierce expectancy, sure that within another fraction of time the trap would be sprung.

Suddenly Mayfield's eyes widened. The doe had given a mighty leap forward. She was flying up the slope now in long bounds, heading straight towards him and straight towards the lynx fifty feet in front of him. Amazed, Mayfield watched her. She must have scented the lynx by now, yet she came straight on. Sandy Jim saw the light in her eyes, the bristling hair on her neck, and in a flash the truth came to him. This doe was a mother racing to the rescue of her fawn.

The lynx crouched midway between the myrtle thicket and the broom grass clump. The doe's last long forward bound carried her to the edge of the broom grass, and for a tenth of a second she paused to nuzzle something that lay hidden there. Then, stiff-legged, her head high, her neck arched, she bounded sideways towards the lynx.

Once Sandy Jim Mayfield had seen a whitetail buck cut a rattlesnake to pieces in the woods. He knew the deadly swiftness of the rattler's stroke, the incredible quickness with which that spear-shaped head could deliver its lethal thrust. But