It was thus at the very moment that Old Man Lynx was striking out with bared claws, and the gray wolves were closing in on him both at once, that his unexpected ally reached the scene.
The Hired Man raised his gun, pointing it straight between two gleaming eyes that shone out in the darkness. He had to do it quickly, they jumped about so fast. Then a shot rang out on the silent night!
It singed a streak across the lynx’s flank, but it felled the wolf whose jaws were just about to clamp about his leg. A second shot nicked the tasseled ear of the great cat fighting so desperately. But it singed the fur on the neck of the second wolf, just in time to check him, as his fangs were finding their way through the thick fur ruff that protected the lynx’s throat. At this second shot, the wolf, with a howl of terror, tucked his tail between his legs and ran.
The Hired Man hesitated, then decided that the lynx had won the right to live by his pluck. Thus Old Man Lynx was left, somewhat the worse for the meeting, but still able to enjoy the rest of his meal; while the Hired Man, counting the night well spent, shuffled home on his snow-shoes. But there was still a gaunt gray wolf at large in the forest—and Fleet Foot and the fawns had still to get back to the herd-yard before morning found them in the haunts of man!
But strange things can happen. No sooner had the lone gray wolf fled from the unexpected slaughter than the wind shifted, and he caught an odor most agreeable to his palate. For his gaunt sides were so hollow that every rib showed. It was an odor he had never before followed up. He had not met it in his Northern wilds, but it smelled porky and delicious.
It was on the trunk of a wild apple tree that he found the little round bristly fellow. And he could see, by the gray light of dawn, that his black sides bulged with fat, in a winter when all the furry folk were lean and hungry.
That alone was puzzling. But what surprised him even more was that this queer fellow showed no sign of fear. He was singing a little song, all in one flat key—“Unk-wunk, unk-wunk, unk-wunk.” It was a young porcupine, one of these prickly fellows so like a tiny bear, only with long black needles instead of fur. The gray wolf did not know how terrible those needle-like quills can be, when once they get in one’s paw. For they are barbed like a hook on the end, and when they stick into one, it hurts worse to pull them out than to leave them where they are. The wood folk that lived around Lone Lake knew enough to leave Unk-Wunk strictly alone. So, he was never afraid. But the wolf did not know. And when the little porcupine, instead of climbing higher, out of his reach, came lazily back down the trunk and began to gnaw the frozen bark, the wolf thought it was easy game.
Thus, without so much as wondering what made this strange beast so fearless, he leaped open-jawed upon the little porcupine. There was just one howl of agony, as he clamped his jaws on those barbed quills, and it was not the porcupine who gave it!
Whining and clawing at his tortured mouth, the wolf rolled about in the snow-drift, choking and spluttering in mingled wrath and terror. For Unk-Wunk’s terrible barbed quills were working deeper and deeper into the roof of his mouth. Finally he rolled over on them, and they pierced through to the brain. That was the last of the great gray wolf that had come down out of the North to prey upon the forest folk around the Valley Farm.
Unk-Wunk, without in the least realizing that he had done so, had performed a public service. And in particular, he had made it safe for Fleet Foot and her fawns to go back home to the deer yard in the gray of the winter dawn.