Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/223

 On this morning, the first sunny morning in many days, the mother puma cut short the breakfast of her nursing kittens. She, too, disliked the rain and had postponed her hunting, remaining in the cave throughout the previous night; and now she was hungry and was eager to find meat. Presently she pushed the kittens away from her, rose, walked out upon the ledge, yawned hugely and stretched her long lithe body. Then, with a low farewell to the cubs which had followed her outside, she walked to the end of the ledge around a jutting shoulder of the rock, leaped to the slanting trunk of a big chestnut oak, and gliding lightly down its rough surface, disappeared into the forest.

Some two hours later a black speck appeared in the sky high above the summit of Unaka Kanoos. For many minutes it swung there, moving in circles and ellipses, gradually growing larger. The puma cubs, playing on the sunny ledge in front of their cave, either did not see it or, if they saw it, paid no attention to it.

Neither instinct nor the teaching, which, even at that early age, they might have had from their mother, had ever warned them of danger from above. Probably they knew vaguely that the air was peopled, for doubtless from time to time they had seen turkey vultures or a solitary raven or duckhawk pass over; but never had any harm come to