Читать книгу Yellow Stonefly - Tim Poland - Страница 13

Ain’t Been No Mountain Lions in This Part of the Country for a Hundred Years

From over the crest of the ridge, wind sheared off down the slopes through the trees, pushing before it a wave of scent and sound, lush markers of survival in a season of plenty. Swept through the air over the mountain, the promise of a means to live.

The fawn had been taken easily enough. It and the doe had been grazing new shoots of foliage breaking from the duff under the forest canopy. Young enough to be erratic in its flight, small enough to be brought down without too much effort, large enough to carry sufficient meat, the fawn was the obvious prey. There was no moment lost to choice. Through the thicker brush around the small clearing, her crouch was low and slow, upwind, down across the slope. Front legs stretched out and pulled her forward, the longer hind legs pushed with taut, ready muscle. The thick tail twitched, whipped with anticipation. Around the teeth, the lobes of whiskered jowl and snout quivered. Just outside the hem of the clearing, her hind feet found the purchase of an outcropping of stone. She set and leapt, bursting from the brush in an impossibly high arc. The doe fluted once and bolted. Frozen for a second, the fawn darted frantically away, then spun with unfocused terror in the opposite direction, into the descending embrace of claws. The fawn collapsed under the long, tawny body, held down by the push of paws. She found the ridge of the neck, and her jaw drove the teeth deep and through the spine. Jaw and teeth locked in place, she pinned the hapless fawn. It did not struggle long.

She dragged the dead fawn out of the clearing, through the deeper brush, and up the slope a short way until she came to a humped outcropping. The fawn’s head flopped on the end of the limp neck when she dropped the body. To the side of the ledge of stone, she scratched out her cache and tugged the carcass into the impression. With her front paws she clawed into the forest floor and buried her prey under a covering of leaves and loam. She was hungry, but she would eat later, ripping into the chest under the rib cage, starting with the heart and lungs.

But now she would rest. Though the fawn was small and the kill quick, she was tired. First, replenish the spent breath. Eat after. From this ledge she could see the approach of any threat to the meal that waited. Across the rock ledge, she stretched the length of her body. The hind legs and long tail draped casually over the lip of stone. She licked one front paw and ran it over her snout, cleaning herself of the drying blood.