"That's what I heard," exclaimed the Boy at the Valley Farm. "Wolves!
Imagine! I didn't suppose they ever came into these woods."
"It's been an unusual winter," his father assured him, stepping out into
the snowy barn-yard. "I saw them once when I was ten years old. But I
thought they had been driven away for good. I suppose the rabbits all
froze, up where they come from, and they got so starved they were driven
to it. They've certainly been chasing these deer."
For as their eyes became accustomed to the snowy darkness, they could
once more see the shadowy forms of Fleet Foot and the fawns by the
hay-mow.
"It must have been those wolves that I heard ten minutes back," said the
Farmer, rubbing his unmittened hands together.
"Just see how hollow these poor things look!" exclaimed the Boy. "They
must be starving. Let's go back inside, so they won't be afraid."
They met the Hired Man just starting forth with his gun. "I'm going for
those wolves," he hastened to explain.
"That's more like it," said the Farmer.
Here they were at last, beside the hay-stack, Fleet Foot and her fawns.
And as three disappointed howls arose from the woods at their back, the
famished deer turned to snatch their first ravenous mouthfuls from
between the bars of the crib. They paused in their banquet only long
enough to stare at the Hired Man, as with snow-shoes strapped to his
feet, he strode down the Old Logging Road,--Lop Ear, the Hound, at his
heels.
"Who-o-o-o!" howled the three gray wolves from the blackness of the
woods. The Hired Man raised his thunder-stick and fired--straight
between a pair of the red eyes that gleamed at him through the night.
"Yoo-o-o-o!" screamed one of the wolves, as he fell, while the cries of
the other two retreated into the forest. And Whoo Lee, the great barred
owl, could have told you that they carried their tails between their
legs. Their weird voices faded rapidly into the depths of the woods; for
wolves travel fast on their round, furry feet, which spread out beneath
them like round snow-shoes.
The Hired Man strode on down the Old Logging Road past the charred
trunks which the forest fire had swept,--standing like white ghosts now
in their snowy mantles,--and on nearly to Lone Lake. But never a sign of
the gleaming eyes of the two remaining wolves could he see, though his
ears shuddered at the weird howls that rang down the wind, and Lop Ear
bristled and growled.
Fleet Foot and the starving fawns nibbled and nibbled at the
hay-mow,--for the time, at least, safe and happy. But could they ever
get back to the herd-yard, with those wolves still at large?
For once they were in luck. The Hired Man was not the only hunter who
followed the wolves that night. Old Man Lynx, that fierce, furry fellow
with tassels on his ears and claws that could rend like steel hooks, had
also been driven down to the Valley by the winter's famine. He, too,
heard the howling of the wolves.
He heard the piercing scream of the wolf the Hired Man had shot, and he
knew what it meant. The lynx was hungry, for the storms had lasted many
days, and the rabbits and grouse hens hid away where he could not find
them. On his own wide, spreading paws, therefore, he set out over the
snow to find the wolf that had fallen. His heart was glad at the
unexpected feast in store, and he whined hungrily under his breath.
Every now and again he had to pause to bite off the icy balls that had
formed under his warm feet. But before ever the Hired Man had turned
back from Lone Lake, Old Man Lynx was peering and sniffing at the wolf
that lay dead.
One thing he did not know, though. No sooner had the two remaining
wolves raced to Lone Lake, with their tails between their legs, and the
roar of the thunder-stick in their ears, than it occurred to them that
they were still ravenously hungry. And the one that had fallen would go
far toward easing that terrible emptiness that drew their sides together
and made them desperate. (For wolves are cannibals!)
So, back the horrid beasts came, running on their furry snow-shoes--back
down the wind, which told the noses of these great wild dogs as plainly
as words that Old Man Lynx was there before them.
"Who-o-o-o," they howled wrathfully, speeding back through the
burnt-wood, over whose ghost-like trunks they leapt in the darkness so
fast that no Hired Man could have shot them had he tried.
Old Man Lynx raised his whiskered face and yowled an answering
challenge.
"Ye-ow-w-w!" he screamed at them defiantly. Then he bent his head to
snatch another mouthful of the meat he knew the wolves were on their way
to claim.
"Ye-ow-w-w!" he screamed again, as the wolf cry swept nearer. This time
he saw two pairs of red eyes gleaming in the darkness.
"I got here first, and I'll make it hot for the first one that comes
within reach of my claws," he warned them, in tones they understood
without words.
"We are two to your one!" they answered him.
Little did Old Man Lynx imagine that he had an ally so near. To him it
was merely a case of having found a meal in the wolf the Hired Man had
shot, and of having the rest of the pack demand it of him. So the giant
cat took his stand, with claws outspread over the prize, his savage face
tense with hate. His green eyes blazed at them through the darkness.
The cowardly wolves paused just out of reach, neither one of them quite
daring to begin the attack, yet willing to fall in, should the other go
first, for both were wild with hunger.
Old Man Lynx was not afraid. He meant merely to meet each wolf as he
came, and fight him off with tooth and claw--or if worst came to worst,
he could climb the nearest tree. For the power to climb is the one great
advantage that cats have over all members of the dog tribe.
Old Man Lynx himself was lean with famine, for the great storm had made
hunting all but impossible for him. Not so much as a wood-mouse had
shown its tracks on the snow for days. And there had been nothing in his
rocky den save the dried and frozen bones of dinners long since past.
To surrender his supper to-night might mean starvation and actual death
to him. But so it did to the wolves. It was to be a fight for life!
Now a lynx's claws are like so many little curved swords of poisoned
steel,--and he had five on each foot. He could dig at a wolf's
unprotected sides with his hind legs while his fore legs were clinging
to the throat in which he would try to fasten his fangs.
The gray wolves knew all this, for Old Man Lynx visited the same
Canadian wilds that they had come from. But even so, in another moment
they had taken the leap--together! And there was more lynx fur flying
than wolf fur--as Whoo Lee, the owl overhead, could have told you.
Just in the nick of time for Old Man Lynx, the Hired Man returned. When
he heard the shrill chorus of returning wolves, he had hastened back,
his great snow-shoes shuffling their way down the Old Logging Road at a
speed of which he had not known them capable.
He was not thinking of Fleet Foot and the fawns. But with the barn full
of cattle, it would never do to leave such beasts at large in the
forest. When he heard Old Man Lynx, however, the Hired Man understood
just what was going on. He had not lived in the back-woods for nothing
all his days. And he decided to draw a little nearer, in the hope of
getting another shot or two at the great gray terrors from the North.
----