Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/159

Rh fatal. No battler in the world is a better in-fighter than the blackcat, and any antagonist near his size, who invites a clinch, rarely comes out of it alive. The pekan first circled the spinning, yowling, slashing lynx more and more rapidly, until there came a time when the side of the gray throat lay before him for a second unguarded. It was enough. With a pounce like the stroke of a coiled rattler, the pekan sprang, and a double set of the most effective fighting teeth known among mammals met deep in the lynx's throat. With all of his sharp eviscerating claws, the great cat raked his opponent. But the blackcat, protected by his thick pelt and tough muscles, was content to exchange any number of surface slashes for the throat-hold. Deeper and deeper the crooked teeth dug; and then with a burst of bright blood, they pierced the jugular vein itself. The struggles of the lynx became weaker and weaker, until, with a last convulsive shudder, the gray body stretched out stark in the snow. The weasel lay panting and lapping at the hot, welling blood, while his own ran down his black fur in unconsidered streams.

It was young Jim who first broke the silence.

"Those pelt 'll bring all of twenty-five dollars," he remarked, stepping forward.

"Help yourself," suggested old Dave, not stirring, however, from where he stood.

At the voices the black weasel sprang up like a flash. With one paw on the dead lynx and another on the marten, he faced the two men in absolute silence.