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.