Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/137

 The average man, looking on at the drama in the glade, would have said that the terrier was beside himself with fear. To Longclaw, apparently, the dog's behavior carried this latter meaning. Those mad shrill cries seemed to the lynx a confession of irresistible, overpowering terror, and they stiffened his resolution and fanned the flame of fury in his heart.

Yet for a while the clamor in the glade confused and worried him. His muscles were taut for the first of the series of bounds which would bring him to grips with his foe; but minute after minute he delayed his charge, exultant over his enemy's obvious panic, yet a trifle nonplused by the volleys of sharp, staccato sound which filled and bewildered his ears, accustomed to the jungle silences.

At last the tumult of barking slackened and ceased. Rusty's nose was testing the air again; his ears were pricked as though to catch some longed-for, eagerly awaited answer to his summons. The big wildcat's head dropped lower, his long back bent like a bow, his four feet drew together under him. Next moment he shot forward, bounding lightly over the soft carpet of the pine straw.

Five feet from the dog he halted, turned sideways to his foe, uttered a strange, wild, long-drawn, indescribably savage cry. Then, as though his legs were steel springs, he bounced high into the air,