Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/310

 the lust of killing had gone out of him. He would not throw away his gun, a gun scarred with notches each one of which told a memorable tale of a buck or a gobbler; but he knew that now he would often forget to carry it with him when he went into the woods. For in those last weary months of his exile he had missed the wild folk not as game but as friends.

He had not carried it with him when, only two or three nights after his return to the plantation, he had gone out into the moonlit woods shortly before midnight to wait and watch until dawn at a certain spot which had been a favorite resort of his because it was a favorite resort of the wild folk also. He wanted no gun that night because his desire was not to kill, but to renew old acquaintanceships—to catch a glimpse, if luck favored him, of some of the wild creatures that move by night. He had been lucky beyond his highest hopes and he felt that the woods gods had prepared a special welcome for him upon his home-coming, showing him a wide-antlered buck and a doe, his wily old friend the coon, and, as a thrilling climax, a battle of lynxes, a rare sight which very few have ever witnessed. And even all this had not contented the gracious woods gods. They had so arranged matters that one of the battling lynxes should be a giant lynx with only one ear and that he should view this one-eared lynx from