Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/26

 table—a crotch of the oak where three stout limbs diverged—he did not proceed to rend and devour his prey, but instead stood idly upon the mink's carcass for perhaps a quarter of an hour while the dusk deepened round him.

At last his barred and mottled tawny pinions opened and he planed outward and downward from the oak, swerved in the air and sailed buoyantly up to a bulky nest of sticks, bark and Spanish moss near the top of a pine. In this nest—the deserted home of a pair of red-shouldered hawks—he deposited the body of the mink. Then he spread his velvet wings again and faded into the gloom.

He had been gone perhaps three minutes when a lump on one of the limbs of the live oak moved. For a quarter of an hour that lump had remained utterly motionless, except for an almost imperceptible movement of its sides which proved that the lump breathed; but throughout that quarter of an hour two beady black orbs had watched Eyes o' Flame as he perched in the crotch of the oak—watched him eagerly yet patiently, calmly yet perhaps vindictively.

Lotor the Lucky was very small, but he was very wise. When he was three months old a cottonmouth moccasin had bitten him. He had recovered, but somehow the venom had retarded his growth. Seasoned veteran though he was, rich in woods lore,