Gray Lynx went ahead. His mate, almost as large as he, and even more
savage in her lightning ferocity, was at the same time more shy of
approaching the habitations of man. Full of suspicions, but driven by the
pangs of midwinter famine, she followed at a little distance, while Gray
Lynx, stealthily, crouching close to the snow, led the way across the
open to the low, snow-muffled outbuildings of the lonely wilderness farm.
He was a strange, sinister figure, this great Canadian lynx, a kind of
gigantic, rough-haired cat with the big, broad, disproportionate pads of
a half-grown Newfoundland pup, and hind legs and haunches grotesquely
over-developed as if in imitation of a jack-rabbit. His moon face,
stiffly-whiskered, and with a sort of turned-back ruff beneath the blunt,
strong jaws, was indescribably wild and savage, lit as it was by a pair
of round, unwinking, palely luminous eyes, and surrounded by sharp ears
fantastically tufted. In color he was all of a shadowy, light gray,
faintly toned on back and flanks with a brownish yellow. His grotesque
but extraordinarily powerful hindquarters were finished off with a
straight stub of a tail, perhaps three inches or four in length. He
might, in fact, have looked like a caricature, but for the appearance of
power and speed and deadly efficiency which he conveyed, the suggestion
of menace in every movement.
Under the necessity of the Hungry Month, the big lynx had visited this
clearing once before, prowling as near as he dared, in the first shadows
of late afternoon. He had seen in the yard a couple of cows—which were
too big to interest him. What was more to his purpose, he had seen some
huddling sheep. Then a draft of icy air blowing from the direction of the
house had borne to his nostrils the dreaded scent of man, and he had
slunk off hurriedly to his coverts. But those sheep! The smell of them,
the remembered relish of a lamb which he had once devoured in the
thickets, stung his appetite to madness. Like most of the wild creatures,
he had learned, either from instinct or experience, that man was less to
be dreaded by night than by day. So, well after nightfall, he had
returned to the farm, bringing his ravenous mate with him.
At one side of the yard, startlingly bright in the light of the low moon,
stood the settler’s house; at the other side, two low, connected barns,
with a shed running half-way to the house. The long, black shadows of the
buildings stretched nearly across the open space, between the farmstead
and the woods. The snow was hard packed and frozen, covered with an inch
of recent and lighter snowfall, which the winds would presently come and
sweep away into the fence-corners. Through the space of shadow Gray Lynx
crept like a denser shadow, till he reached the corner of the nearest
barn. Here he crouched, making himself as small as possible, while he
took a long sniff at one of the cracks in the warped, ill-seasoned,
hemlock boarding. Then he turned his head and looked at his mate, who was
crouching some ten paces to the rear. As if this was a signal that all
was as it should be, she ran lightly forward and crouched again beside
him.
From within, besides that warm, distracting, woolly smell, came
comfortable rustlings of dry hay, and sounds of chewing, and safe
contented breathings. It was obvious that the sheep were in there. Gray
Lynx’s eyes, piercing and impatient, searched the blank wall before him.
There was no entrance from that side. Furtively he led the way round the
corner, his mate still keeping a prudent distance. At the edge of the
moonlit yard he hesitated. Still there was no opening. Keeping carefully
in the shadow, he prowled around to the other corner of the building, but
with no better luck. Then, growing more bold, he ventured into the light
and crept down the front of the barn, flattening himself to the snow as
he went; his mate, distrustful still, and now growing angry as she began
to feel that she had been fooled, peered around the corner and watched
him.
Gray Lynx was furious. He had expected to see those sheep still huddled
in the yard. Finding that they were inside the barn, he then expected to
get in among them by the same way they themselves had entered. Where such
fools as sheep could, surely he could go. He knew nothing of doors that
closed and opened, so he was puzzled. He drew back and stared up at the
roof. Assuredly, the sheep must have got in by way of the roof. He could
see no opening up there, however, so he went prowling around the other
barn and the shed as well, finding everything shut up tightly against the
biting cold. Then he came again to his mate, who was now awaiting him,
tail and whiskers twitching with ill-humor, in the shadow behind the
first barn.
But Gray Lynx was not yet ready to acknowledge defeat. The roof of the
shed was lower than that of the barns. With a tremendous leap he gained
it, but only to fall back ignominiously beneath a mass of snow which his
claws had disengaged. At the next attempt, however, he got a grip with
his front paws upon the roof itself, and so drew himself up, but not
without a sharp noise of scraping and clawing. The sudden sound disturbed
the hens, roosting inside immediately below the roof, and they set up a
shrill cackling of alarm.
Gray Lynx stopped, held himself rigid, and listened with all his ears.
Chickens would do him almost as well as sheep—if only he could come at
them! He clawed savagely at the roof, but it was new and strong, and he
speedily found that there was nothing to be hoped for by that method of
procedure. Frantic with baffled eagerness, he ran along the shed and
sprang with a magnificent bound to the roof of the barn. At the thud of
his landing the cattle stirred and snorted uneasily, and the two horses
whinnied with anxious interrogation.
At this instant a window in the farmhouse flew up with a clatter. Gray
Lynx turned his flat, cruel face sharply toward the sound. He saw a jet
of flame spurt from the window; a crashing thunder shocked his ears, and
something hummed viciously close above his head. Fortunately for him, the
light of the moon is a deceptive light to shoot by. He left no chance,
however, for the settler to try a second shot. With one wild leap he
cleared the roof and alighted on the snow behind the barn. He saw his
mate already fleeing, and he followed in long, panic-stricken bounds.
Well within the shelter of the woods, Gray Lynx found his mate awaiting
him. She stood with her head turned back over her shoulder, eying him
dangerously. What she conveyed to him by that look is not with any
certainty to be recorded; but it seemed to be unpleasant in its drift,
for Gray Lynx turned aside, in a casual way, and pretended to sniff
interestedly at the day-old trail of a rabbit. It was difficult, however,
to assume an interest for any length of time in anything so hopelessly
uninteresting. After a few seconds he wandered off stealthily, in search
of some fresher trail. His mate, though hot with scorn and
disappointment, ranged along within a few leaps of him. In such a famine
season it was to the interest of both that they should hunt together, so
far as their morose and distrustful natures made it possible.
The stillness of death itself lay on the forest. The very air seemed
brittle under the intense cold. The glare of the unclouded moon was
glassy, hard, implacable. It seemed to devitalize even the strong,
stealthy forms of the gliding lynxes, to change them into a pair of
drifting ghosts, which turned their heads from side to side as they went,
and flashed from their eyes a pale, blasting fire.
But Gray Lynx had a very unghostly hunger—as had also his mate. Suddenly
his unerring eyes detected, under a spreading hemlock, a spot where the
snow had been disturbed. To a less keen vision it would have been
nothing, but to Gray Lynx it was a clear, unmistakable indication.
Swerving sharply from his trail, he pounced upon the little roughness in
the snow, and began digging furiously with his forepaws. In a moment he
was half buried, for the snow, here in the shelter of the trees, lay
softer than in the wind-beaten fields. Sniffing his way by his
well-instructed nose, he followed a deep trail which led in toward the
trunk of the hemlock. His mate, meanwhile, drew near and watched
enviously. A moment more and his head emerged amid a swirl of fluttering
wings and flying snow. In his jaws he held a big cock-grouse. The unhappy
bird had buried himself in the snow for the night, that he might sleep
more warmly than on his roost among the branches. For a second more his
strong wings flapped spasmodically, then Gray Lynx crunched the life out
of him and fell to his meal.
The ill-humored female crept nearer, crouching with a conciliatory air.
But Gray Lynx was not of a gallant or chivalrous tribe, and a single
cock-grouse is not half a meal for a starving lynx. With a strident snarl
he thrust out one great paw in warning. The female stopped, licked her
lips hungrily, then turned like lightning and ran up a neighboring
fir-tree. Her ears had caught the sound of a startled twitter which had
answered Gray Lynx’s snarl. There were snow-buntings resting in that
tree. Her iron claws, however, clutching at the bark, announced her
coming, and for all her speed the birds escaped her, hopping up with
terrified outcry to the topmost slender branches, where she could not go.
Smarting with disappointment, she descended the tree, and continued her
prowl at a distance of some twenty paces from her selfish partner, who
had by this time finished up the grouse.
For perhaps half an hour nothing more happened, and the temper of Gray
Lynx’s mate grew momently more dangerous. It was bad enough to be so
hungry as she was, but to be first led into a trap by Gray Lynx and then
to see him make a meal before her eyes, this was hardly to be borne. All
at once she gave a great leap to one side, turning in the air as she
sprang, and came down, with forepaws outstretched and claws wide spread,
just at the edge of a snow-draped bush. Out of the corner of her eye she
had seen a wood-mouse. With her miraculous speed of action, as of a
mighty spring unloosed, she had caught the tiny victim just as it was
vanishing under the refuge. It made but one mouthful, to be sure, but it
was quite as good as a snow-bunting would have been. She licked her
chops, gave Gray Lynx a sidelong look, and crept on.
Slowly the moon rolled up the vitreous sky, shortening the shadows of
tree and stump. The forest was more open here, having been recently gone
over by the lumbermen. Dense thickets, single trees, ranks of stumps,
aisles and colonnades of tall second growth, not yet quite heavy enough
for the woodsman’s axe, succeeded each other in bewildering confusion. By
and by, from a hemlock stump just ahead but hidden by some bushes, came a
crisp sound of gnawing. Both lynxes crouched flat, their absurd tails
twitching. Then, separating so that one should go to each side of the
clump of bushes, they crept upon the heedless gnawer. As they came in
sight of him, they stopped. It was a big porcupine, fat, warmly clad, and
indifferent alike to foe and frost.
Full well the lynxes knew that this was no quarry for their hunting. But
they could not help dallying with the temptation. They stole nearer,
their mouths watering. The porcupine went on gnawing the dry hemlock; but
when the lynxes were come within a few feet of him, he stopped, put his
nose between his forepaws, and erected his needle-pointed quills, till
there was nothing of him to be seen but this threatening array. The
lynxes crouched flat, and eyed him longingly. At last the female, her
hunger getting the better of her discretion, stole closer and reached out
a prying nose, as if hoping to find some weak point in the scornful
rodent’s defences. Gray Lynx snarled a warning; but in that same instant
the porcupine’s tail—a massive member covered with tiniest needles—jerked
sharply and just brushed the intruding muzzle. With a spitting yowl, the
lynx jumped backward, two or three slender quills sticking in her nose
like pins in a cushion. Paw and rub and wallow as she might, she could
not get them out, for their barbed edges held inexorably. All she could
do was break them, and go on, with the points rankling like wasp-stings
in her tender muzzle. From time to time she would plunge her face in the
snow, to allay the torment. And her temper was by no means improved.
All this, however, troubled Gray Lynx not at all. To be sure, the mishap
to his mate had cooled his longing for porcupine meat, and he had resumed
his quest of safe hunting. But concern for the female’s sufferings never
entered into his savage heart. She was of importance to him only if they
should find some big game—a strayed sheep or a doe, for instance—which
they could bring down more surely and more quickly by acting in
combination. There was none of that close and firm intimacy which so
often appears to exist between the male and female wolf.
In traversing an alley of big spruce stumps, the two came close together,
though they continued to pay each other not the slightest attention. A
light, dull _pad-pad_ struck their ears, and both crouched flat. In the
next instant a white rabbit shot past them, almost brushing their noses.
His great, simple eyes starting from his head with terror, he went by at
such a pace that there was no time to strike him down, though the female,
who was the farthest from him, made a futile swipe at him with one paw.
It was clear that something deadly must be following the rabbit, to cause
him such blind panic. Whatever it might be, the lynxes had no fear of it.
They wanted it. And they waited for it.
And the next moment it came.
It came running soundlessly, nose up on the hot scent, a slim, low,
long-bodied, sinuous white beast, with a sharp-pointed head and eyes like
two drops of liquid fire. As it shot past him, Gray Lynx made a stroke at
it and missed. But in the next fraction of a second the female had
pounced. She caught the weasel, with both paws, in mid-leap. Indomitable,
it writhed up and fixed its long, fine teeth in her nose. Then her fangs
closed about its slender loins, and the fierce life was crunched out of
it. With the blood streaming from her nose—which eased, however, for a
moment the galling ache of the porcupine barbs—she fell to her meat,
growling harshly over it. Gray Lynx, perhaps persuading himself that he
had helped at the hunting of this quarry, demanded a share, and seized
one of the weasel’s hind legs in his teeth. But with a snarl the female
struck at him, clawing viciously the side of his head. He was in no
anxiety to force matters with so redoubtable an adversary, so, spitting
indignantly, he drew off and sat down on his haunches to watch the feast.
The feast was brief. For, though the weasel was a fairly large one, it
was by no means so large as the lynx’s hunger. Still, when she had
finished, and passed her great paw over her face and licked her chest
clean of blood, she might have felt fairly comfortable but for that
inexorable anguish in her nose.
Not long after this another rabbit bounded forth from a thicket just
ahead, and darted straight between them. Both sprang at it,
simultaneously, but each balked the other; and the rabbit, stretched out
into a tense, white line of flying fur, shot unscathed from under their
claws. Gray Lynx, as it chanced, had been the nearest to the quarry.
Choosing to think that he would have made a kill had his mate’s
interference not thwarted him, he gave vent to his wrath in a buffet,
which caught her on the flank and sent her rolling over on the snow.
Recovering herself, she faced him for a moment or two with eyes that
flamed green, half minded to fly at his throat. Then, thinking better of
it, she turned away and fell to nosing a mouse trail.
The trail was none too fresh, but neither was it hopelessly stale. She
chose to follow it. Thereupon Gray Lynx, hopeful of something worth
while, stole nearer to see what she might be trailing.
Now, it chanced that in this particular neighborhood a trapper had been
busy. A morsel of frozen fish lay upon the snow. Both prowlers saw it at
the same time, and pounced for it. But it was Gray Lynx who reached it
first, and he bolted it in one mouthful, while his mate snarled with
rage. Sniffing about for other possible fragments, he stepped to one
side. There was a muffled click beneath the surface of the snow.
Straightway Gray Lynx, doubling himself like a full-drawn bow, and
ripping out a screech of panic, sprang into the air, with a steel trap
hanging to his left forepaw.
The trap was attached by a chain to a solid wooden balk, too heavy for
Gray Lynx to drag. Biting savagely at the strange horror which had
clutched him, yowling and spitting, and rolling head over heels, he lost
his wits entirely in the madness of his efforts to escape. For a moment
the female shrank back, with flattened ears and narrowed eyes, frightened
and bewildered. Then, seeming to imagine that there was some treachery to
herself in this dreadful and inexplicable performance, she drew nearer,
with a menacing growl. The next instant, as if quite beside herself at
the sight of such contortions, she gave vent to a mad screech and flung
herself at Gray Lynx’s throat.
In a moment the two became, as it were, one ball of clinging, tearing,
screeching fur and claws. They rolled over and over in the snow, the
heavy trap striking them both impartially, the chain now entangling them,
now flying loose with a sharp jangle. Blood spattered in every direction,
amid spurts of snow and flecks of torn fur. But Gray Lynx, hampered by
trap and chain, and weakened alike by terror of the unknown and horror at
the incomprehensible fury of his mate, was overmatched from the first. In
a few minutes the tense ball seemed to loosen. The maniacal uproar ceased
to affront the night, diminishing to a panting growl. Gray Lynx’s body
straightened out. The female continued to worry it for a few moments.
Then, as if suddenly coming to her senses, she stopped, drew off, eyed
the mangled and twitching form, and slunk away into the nearest bushes.
Here she crouched, as if in terror, and peered out fascinated. At last
the shape of what had once been her mate lay quite still. Then, after a
little, she crept away, hid herself in a remote thicket, and fell to
licking her scars and cleansing her fur. And the outstretched body of
Gray Lynx, with cruel eyes half open and staring blankly, stiffened
little by little in the still, implacable frost.