A moment later came a huge lynx, padding softly but fearlessly straight out into the revealing light, as if he knew that at this season, when the bears were asleep and the bull moose, bereft of their antlers, had lost their interest in combat, there was none of all the forest kindreds to challenge his supremacy. He was stealthy, of course, in every movement, and his round, sinister eyes glared palely into every covert, but that was merely because he dreaded to frighten off a possible quarry, not because he feared a lurking foe. The frozen fish, however, showed no signs of flight at his approach; so he fell upon the nearest fragment and bolted it ravenously.
"HIS ROUND, SINISTER EYES GLARED PALELY INTO EVERY COVERT."
Having thus eagerly disposed of several substantial lumps, the great lynx became more critical, and went sniffing fastidiously from morsel to morsel as if he revelled in such unexpected abundance. Suddenly there was a vicious click; and with a spit and a yowl the lynx started as if to jump into the air. Instead of rising, however, some six or seven feet, under the propulsion of his mighty, spring-like muscles, he merely bowed his back and strained tremendously. In response, a small thing of dark steel emerged from the snow, followed closely by a log of heavy wood. The lynx was caught in a trap by his right fore foot.
For a minute or two the panic-stricken beast went through a number of more or less aimless contortions, spitting and screeching, biting at the trap, and clawing frantically at the log. Presently, however, finding that his contortions only made the thing that had him grip the harder and hurt him the more savagely, he halted to consider his predicament. Consideration not appearing to ease that urgent anguish in his paw, he began to strain steadily backward, hoping, if he could not free himself, at least to drag his captor into the woods and perhaps lose it among the trees. The log, however, was very heavy, and his best efforts could move it but a few inches at a time. When, at the end of an hour of fierce struggle, he lay down utterly exhausted, he was still in the full glare of the moon, still several feet from the shelter of the branches. But no sooner had he lain down, than the crunching of a footstep on the crisp snow brought him to his feet again; and with every hair on end along his back, his eyes ablaze with rage and fear, he turned to face the tall figure of a backwoodsman, who stood gazing at him with a smile of satisfaction from the other side of the glade.
Just about three hours earlier, on his way into the Cross Roads Settlement, Pete Logan had set that trap with particular care, and with the definite purpose of capturing that particular lynx. With all his cunning, little did the great tuft-eared cat suspect that for weeks the backwoodsman had been watching him, noting his haunts and trails, observing his peculiarities, and laying plans for his capture. That very evening, at the Cross Roads, Logan had boasted that single-handed he would bring the big lynx into the Settlement, alive and undamaged. He wanted the splendid animal to sell to an American who was collecting wild beasts for menageries; and to avoid injuring the captive's fine gray fur he had partly muffled the cruel teeth of the trap, that they might take hold without tearing.
Having no dread of anything that inhabited the wilds, Logan had left his rifle at home, and carried no weapon but the knife in his belt and his light, straight-hafted axe. In the pack on his back, however, he brought what he intended should serve him better than any weapon,—a thick blanket, and a heavy canvas sack. Now, as he stood eying the frightened and furious captive, he undid the pack and shook the big blanket loose. The lynx glared with new terror at the ample folds. He had seen men before, but he had never seen one shaking out a blanket, which looked to him like a kind of gigantic and awful wings.
Logan had made his plans with careful foresight; and now it was with the deliberation of absolute confidence that he went about the execution of them. His axe gripped in readiness for any unforeseen piece of strategy on the part of the foe, he advanced with the blanket outspread before him like a shield. Back and back, to the limit of his bonds, cowered the lynx, glaring defiance and inextinguishable hate. Slowly the man drew near, till, just barely within reach of the beast's spring, he stopped. For perhaps half a minute more neither man nor beast stirred a muscle,—till the tension of the captive's nerves must have neared the breaking-point. Then, as if his own nerves knew by sympathy the exactly proper moment for the next move in the game, Logan made a swooping forward plunge with the blanket. With a screech of fury the lynx sprang to the grapple,—to find himself, in half a second, rolled over and tangled up and swathed helpless in the smothering woollen folds. In vain he bit, and spat, and yowled, and tore. His keen white fangs caught nothing but choking wool; his rending claws had no chance to do their work; and the crushing weight of the woodsman's sturdy body was bearing him down into the snow. In a few moments, daunted by the thick darkness over his eyes and exhausted by the impotence of his efforts, he lay still, quivering with rage. Then, with the most delicate caution, working through a couple of folds of the blanket, Logan released the jaws of the trap and slipped it warily from the imprisoned paw. To remove it from within the perilous paral was, of course, not to be thought of; but he feared to damage the joint by leaving it in that inexorable clutch a moment longer than was necessary. This done, he deftly whipped a lashing of cod-line about the bundle, binding the legs securely, but leaving a measure of freedom about the head and neck. Then he thrust the bundle into the canvas bag, slung it over his back, and started on the five-mile tramp back to his camp.
Logan travelled without snow-shoes, because there was just now little snow on the trails, or even in the deep woods. What snow there was, moreover, was frozen almost as hard as rock, except for an inch or two of fluffy stuff which had fallen leisurely within a couple of days. An extraordinarily heavy and prolonged January thaw, followed by fierce and sudden frost, had brought about this unusual condition, making something like a famine among the hunting kindreds of the forest, whose light-footed quarry, the eaters of bark and twig and bud, now found flight easy over the frozen surfaces.