Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/331

 for its bristling hair and its steady, unwinking eyes, he might have believed it dead as it lay there in front of him, its one ear pricked forward, its round bearded face pillowed on its forepaws, to one of which the steel trap still clung.

The boy muttered an exclamation of impatience. It was his own weakness which provoked him—the sentimental weakness which had caused him to see for an instant in that round bearded face the face of the striped-and-spotted lynx kitten which used to curl itself up on his chest when he lay down for a nap under the plantation trees—the face of Byng, his playmate, and not the fiendish face of Lynx Lucifer, murderer of little fawns. He raised his gun and took careful aim, drawing a bead upon the furry forehead between the unwinking eyes.

Coming from behind, in long leaps that made no sound as his big paws pounded the springy turf, the Airedale flashed past him, a long-drawn streak of yellowish brown that almost brushed his elbow as it shot by. So startled was the boy that, in the very act of pulling trigger, he jumped aside, and the load of buckshot dug a hole in the ground three feet from the squirming, writhing mass in front of him where dog and lynx heaved and strained in deadly embrace. A half minute the boy stood irresolute,