“Wow! a bobcat!” exclaimed Andy, fussing with his gun, though Rob instantly laid a detaining hand on his arm and hastily remarked:
“None of that sort of work, Andy, on your life, remember! It would ruin the whole business with us! It’s a dangerous job to try to shoot a cat when you can only see the glare of its eyes. Donald, what do you say?”
“First then, it is no common cat, but a big lynx, a fearsome creature for any man to tackle,” returned the young Canadian with complete assurance that told he knew what he was speaking about.
“Worse and worse!” grunted Andy, feeling a trifle disappointed because Rob had laid down the law, for he aspired to some day kill such a fighting monster as a full-grown Canada lynx, and it was too bad that circumstances over which he had no control were now fated to keep him from carrying out that somewhat ambitious desire.
Rob had been fumbling about his person, and suddenly there shot out a small but intense ray of light. The scout master had thought to fetch along with him that exceedingly useful little hand electric torch, and was now putting the same to good service.
Tubby stood on his tiptoes in order to see better, for he chanced to be just behind Andy, who somehow did not think to step aside. What he beheld gave him a further quiver along the region of his spine, as Tubby afterward admitted “just as if some malicious joker had suddenly emptied a bucketful of icy water down his back.”
There was no mistake about it. Crouching upon the limb of the hemlock they could see the beast, much larger than any wildcat they had ever met in all their travels, and plainly marked with odd-looking tasselated ears, and the hairy growth so like whiskers, that distinguish the true Canadian lynx.
The cat did not like that piercing glow from Rob’s dazzling light as was evidenced by a low fierce growling sound. Tubby had often heard the pet tomcat at home make that same noise when holding a captured sparrow between his teeth, and threatened by a rival and envious feline desirous of taking the prize away from the possessor.
At the same time the lynx showed no disposition to retreat, while they would not dare venture along the trail, because in so doing they must pass directly under its “roost,” as Andy called it.
Besides, Rob was not without caution, though on occasion he could be just as dashing as the next one. There was always a time when discretion might be deemed the better part of valor; and such an occasion now confronted them, Rob thought.