She continued well past the spot she had decided upon. then adroitly broke her trail by the expedient of leaping atop the bole of a fallen tree, now scoured of snow by the wind. Climbing onto the mass of dead roots and frozen earth, she reared to her full length on her hind logs and carefully hung her precious doe over the broad branch of a still-standing tree. Below that branch all the way down, the trunk stood bare of all save slippery bark encased in even slipperier ice, so the carcass should be safe from the depredations of any other predator or scavenger save perhaps a bear or another cat.
But the only bear that shared her range was denned up for the winter a full day’s run to the north, while the smaller cats of varying sizes and races hereabouts ran in mortal fear of the Hunter and would never dare to venture so close to her den while she was about.
The soil was thin and studded with many rocks on the slope, and over the years many a tree had fallen to storm’s or winds or simply the erosion that bared roots. The canny cat now made good use of the raised way provided by these fallen treetrunks to wend her way back toward the ambush point she had earlier chosen without leaving telltale signs of her return passage in the snow.
Arriving at last in the patch of saplings and thick brush, she bellied down and made a swift and silent trip to the opposite side of the copse. There, in what she felt to be the ideal spot, she crouched, motionless as the very rocks frozen beneath the shrouding snow, waiting.
The lead two-leg, slightly crouching, with his gaze locked on her tracks and the broad trail made by dragging the deer, came abreast of the Hunter, then passed her, a long, shiny-tipped stick dangling from one forepaw. Next, one behind the other, came trotting two two-legs, each of them grasping one of the cursive, horn-covered sticks that threw the deadly little black sticks.
All of these she allowed to pass out of sight around the point of the copse. for the very next two-leg was, she could see, bigger than the others, which meant that he was the pack leader, thought the Hunter. He bore neither long stick nor cursive horn-stick and little ones, but rather three of an intermediate size.
Soundless as very death itself, the Hunter hurled herself upon this leader of the two-leg pack, and even as her weight and momentum bore him toward the snowy ground, she thrust her good right forepaw around his head, hooked her wicked claws bone-deep into the flesh over the jaw, then jerked sharply back and to her right.
The Hunter growled deeply in satisfaction at the sound and the feel of the snapping of the neck of the biggest two-leg. Then she spun upon her furry haunches and bounded easily back to become instantly lost to sight among the snow-covered undergrowth of the copse, leaving the remaining two-legs all making loud noises behind her.
Many of the little black sticks flew after her, but only one of them fleshed itself at all, and that one did no more than to split the very tip of her ear before hissing on to rattle among the treetrunks until spent.
Well pleased with both her plan and its execution, the Hunter negotiated the width of the copse and made her way back to where she had cached her doe. Soon she and her three cubs would be feasting upon tasty deer flesh in their warm, safe, comfortable den, while the remaining members of the two-leg pack filled their own bellies with the carcass of their dead leader.
With only the one reliable forepaw, the Hunter found it a long and difficult and very painful task to maneuver the stiff and weighty deer carcass through the twisting, turning tunnel, but finally she arrived in the spacious den, to the most raucous welcome of her three cubs.
When her belly was stuffed with venison, when the cubs had consumed as much of the meat as they desired and then nursed, the Hunter padded over to the pool that was never dry but ever full of icy water in any season. Her thirst slaked, she padded back, thoroughly washed the sleepy cubs, then curled up with them to sleep.
She was aware, thanks to her keen hearing, that a winter pack of wolves was approaching the high place on which this den of hers was situated, but she harbored no fear of even so many, not while she lay safe in the den. No single wolf, no matter how outsize, could be a match for the Hunter, and the inner portions of the convoluted passage which was the only entry to the den of which she was then aware could be negotiated by no more than a single wolf at a time.
Many winters ago. she and her mother and her littermates—they then being something over a year old—had whiled away a snowy afternoon by taking turns killing wolves as the lupines reached the first turn in the entry tunnel. One by One, they had slain or seriously maimed the marauders, who then were dragged out backward by their packmates, torn apart and eaten. Finally, as darkness approached, the huge pack—their bellies by then partially filled with wolfmeat from their cannibalistic feast—departed the high place to seek easier prey in the forests below.
Aware that among other natural advantages, her sight was far superior to that of the wolves in the almost total darkness prevailing in the tunnel, the great cat anticipated no difficulty in doing the amount of killing necessary to discourage this pack, if matters came to that.
A sudden intensification of the hot, lancing pain in her left foreleg awakened the Hunter, that and a thirst that was raging. Arising, she hobbled unsteadily across the high-ceilinged, airy den to lap avidly at the pool in one corner.
Her thirst sated for the nonce with the water, which, though always crackling-cold, never froze over in even the most bitter of winters, she did not return to the spot whereon the cubs were sleeping, but rather hobbled over to take a sentry post at the inner mouth of the tunnel, for her senses cold her that a large number of wolves now were on the high place and were, some of them, milling about and sniffing at the track she had made while dragging the dead doe’s carcass.
Lying down there, for she seemed strangely devoid of energy, the big cat instinctively licked at her swollen, throbbing left foreleg, at the inflamed spot where the horn had pierced her, but even the gentle touch of her tongue sent bolts of burning, near-intolerable agony coursing through her body. And, of course, that moment was when she heard the first wolf enter the tunnel.
Even while sleeping, an unsleeping portion of the Hunter’s consciousness had been made aware by the feline’s senses that the two-leg pack, hotly pursued by the wolf pack, had taken refuge upon the high, smooth-sided, flat-topped place. whereon in better weather full many a cat had sunned itself.
But because she did know that eyrie so well, she knew that there was no danger of the two-legs getting from there to her den. She did not think that the wolves could jump high enough to gain to the top of that place, but if they could and they really wanted to eat the two-legs. they were more than welcome to the smelly creatures. As for her, she had nearly gagged at the foul stench of that two-leg she had killed so easily on the preceding day.
When the claw clicks and shufflings and snufflings told her that the lupine invader was past the first turn of the passage, she entered it herself, pulling as little weight as possible upon her strangely huge and very tender left foreleg. They two met at a point between the first turn and the second, in a section too low-ceilinged for either to stand fully erect.
The Hunter was supremely confident, for she knew well that she possessed the deadly advantage, here; for with only toothy jaws for weapons, the wolf could but lunge for her throat, whereas, completely discounting her own more than adequate dentition, a single blow from her claw-studded forepaw could smash the life out of that wolf as it had of so many before him. But she reckoned without her disability.