"Jay Lake - The Leopard's Paw" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

A week to the day after he had hunted and killed the great predator, Jacob Ervin was ready to wear its
pelt. The Borgans and their fellow tribes believed that the leopard priests had been skin changers,
walking the night with claws and fangs to punish the disloyal and slay the unwary. Ervin knew the secret
of skin changing right enoughтАУit was here in his hand.

He slipped the wicker frame across the shoulder and lashed the legs to his upper arms. The skull fell
down over his forehead, while he had left the skin of the neck open to provide additional concealment as
it dangled. The leopardтАЩs pelt was heavy, but he knew the aspect he presented to any man or beast
watching was ferocious.

Ervin padded into the night, using a sort of crouched run he had practiced. It was as close as he could get
to the bounding gait of the one of the great cats, but he reckoned that not many were going to stick
around to criticize his errors.

Only a man could stand against the leopards of these hills, and not many men at that.

He made his practice run by night, to avoid betraying details out of place. Tall grass which Ervin the man
could simply look over swatted Ervin the leopard in the face. A real cat would have stopped and sat up,
or maybe taken a great leap, but neither was an option for him. He cursed the slashes the sharp plant
blades opened in his skin, but kept running. He was not a man to shirk or set aside a task once
committed to it.

Jacob Ervin was a near-perfect specimen of human development. His physique had been the envy of
anatomists at the university in Boulder when he attended college, before all the trouble started. But the
human body is not designed to run long distances bent double, especially not with forty pounds of wicker
and hide pressing down upon it.

By the time he reached the little creek which marked the edge of what Ervin thought of as his front yard,
his hips were like to kill him, and his hands were bloody from supporting his weight. He knew heтАЩd need
to take a few days to let the palms heal, and make some sort of hand-shoe. Running gloves.

He stopped to drink, careful to bend down and lap like a cat, his face to the water.

When he looked up from his refreshment, Ervin saw another sabretooth leopard watching him carefully
from the other bank, not ten feet distant. An easy pounce for such a creature.

This was peril indeed! His poniard was back in his cave-camp. With the wicker bound to his upper arms,
Ervin could not throw the bone-crushing punch heтАЩd used to kill the cat from which heтАЩd taken the skin.
That had been a carefully-set ambush, too, baited with a wounded antelope check staked out and crying.
He had been at his most prepared.

If the other cat leapt now, he was dead. By God, heтАЩd show it a thing or two! Ervin tilted his head back
and roared, the astonishing projective power of his massive lungs creating an unholy screech that woke
the night-roosting birds amid the nearby reeds.

The other cat roared back at him, then turned to pad off into the moonlight.

Victory, even without force of arm, was still victory. ErvinтАЩs steps were lighter on the way back to his
fire, though he took more care with his hands, avoiding the tall grass as much as possible.