“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!)