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.