Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 162: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

952 Chak-oor’s rival was sitting on the lip of the rock. Momentarily the hunter expected to see him swoop at the lynx and warn him aside. A mere speck in the sky, the fe- male was coming home with a grayling taken from a fish-hawk. A mile away, Chak-oor sat immobile, watching every move of his mate and of his three enemies. When the lynx was a bow-shot down the cliff, the rival eagle screamed and flew at him. The lynx crouched and hissed. The rival would not come to grips with those ripping claws and sharper teeth, but beat the air above. After a moment the lynx realized it was only a bluster, and started to scale the almost perpendicular rock a hundred feet high. Then was the moment for the eagle to dislodge him and dash him down, but still he feared to close in. From far off the female had seen her younglings threatened. Dropping her bur- den, she darted like a teal for the nest. Just as she reached the ledge, the lynx crawled over the lip, clawed a pawful of feathers from the rival, and drove him off to a safer height. Without hesitation, with no attempt at strategy, she pitched at the tawny enemy whom she and her great mate together had driven off a score of times. The fight ended quickly. The female had given up her wing advantage and met her foe on his own footing. Her only help from the rival eagle was screams and wild gyrations. Her talons and beak were small hurt to the thick hide and bristly fur of the lynx. The big cat slashed her feathers ‘with each razor claw. She was drawn into the ripping death and held. Her struggles weakened. Then the hunter saw -a shadow glide across the slope. Looking upward he saw THE U ) ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Chak-oor, like a brown streak, volt down into the fight. The great eagle’s beak ripped a furrow in the lvnx’s stubby muzzle, and his talons clutched deeply into the cat’s shoulder. The lynx loosed the female and pivoted, snarl- ing. But Chak-oor was cunning, from in- cessant fighting with the cat tribe. He danced aside to the very lip; and there waited for the lynx to seize him. The cat’s teeth closed upon his thigh; his own steel- hooked talons clutched the cat’s foreleg. Then Chak-oor flopped off into space. The hunter, with breath bated, saw a whirling mass of feathers and gray fur car- een downward. Saw the eagle loosen his hold in mid-air. Saw the cat, feet vainly out- spread and clawing the air, drop with a crashing thud on a rock, and lie still. Saw Chak-oor, bedraggled, heavy-winged and wounded afresh, circle back toward the nest. The rival had returned to the ledge, now that the tawny peril had been killed. Sit- ting triumphantly on the rock-lip again, he chak-chaked his challenge. The hunter was very wise in the matter of wild things. He remembered the female he had shot; recollected the wound he had given Chak-oor. In a fiash he understood the strange triangle and how it had come to be. A hot wave of admiration for the great eagle dashed all his mercenary thoughts aside. Even his callous nature was stirred by the shrewd, fearless battle he had wit- nessed, ‘I’m damned if you do!” he cried an- erily. As the rival spread his wings to attack the wounded master of Dunali Major, the rifle barked sharply. Once, END U ORCHARD PETALS "THE buds, like little candles, white And pink upon each tree, Hold each aloft its little light, So brave and gallantly That we who walk in worried night, Must smile, to see. Mary Carolyn Davies. Conn lDOOlK