Five minutes more, however, and the wary beasts again drew closer and Logan found that the strain of guarding himself on all sides at once was overwhelming. At any moment, as he knew, those hungry eyes might all close in on him together. A few hundred yards ahead, as he bethought himself, the trail led under the foot of a high, almost perpendicular rock; and he made up his mind that he must reach that rock as speedily as possible. With his back against the steep face of it he could face the charge of the pack to better advantage. Breaking into a long, unhurried trot, he pressed on, swinging the axe from side to side in swift, menacing sweeps, and uttering angry expletives which the wolves seemed to respect as much as they did the gleaming weapon. Before he gained the foot of the rock, however, the beasts had grown more confident and more impatient, making little sudden leaps at him, from one side or the other, so incessantly that his arm had not a moment's rest; and he realized that the crisis of the adventure could not be much longer delayed.
When he reached the foot of the rock and turned at bay, the wolves drew back once more and formed a half-circle before him, a moving, interweaving half-circle that drew closer and grew smaller stealthily. Suddenly the wolf which seemed the leader sprang straight in. But the woodsman seemed to divine the move even before it began, so sharply did he meet it with a step forward and a savage axe-stroke; and the wolf sprang back just in time to save its skull.
And now, in the clutch of the final trial, Logan had an inspiration. With all the doggedness of the backwoods will he had vowed that he would not give up the rich booty on his back. But the question had at last, as he saw, become one of giving up his own life. In this crisis, his backwoods understanding and sympathy suddenly went out toward the plucky but helpless captive in the sack on his back. It would be quite too bad that the splendid lynx, with all his fighting equipment of fangs and claws, should be torn to pieces in his bonds without a chance to make a fight for life. Moreover, as he realized with the next thought, here was perhaps a chance to create an effective diversion in his own favour.
With a shout and a mad whirling of the axe, he once more drew back the narrowing crescent of the wolves. The next instant he swung the bag from his back, ripped open the mouth of it, and emptied out the writhing roll of blanket upon the snow at his feet,—while the wolves, eyeing this new procedure with suspicion, held back a few moments before again closing in. As the bundle fell, Logan seized one corner of the blanket, and with a dexterous twist and throw unrolled it, landing the prisoner almost under the noses of the wolves.
Bewildered for an instant, the lynx had no time to bound back and scurry up the steep face of the rock to safety. He had no sooner gained his feet than the whole pack was upon him. With a screech of fury he proclaimed his understanding of the crisis, and turned every tooth and claw into the fray. His fangs, of course, were no match for those of any one of his assailants; but his claws were weapons of such quality that no single wolf could have withstood him. As it was, the wolves in their eagerness got in one another's way; and as the mass of them smothered the lynx down, more than one got eviscerating slashes that sent them yelping out of battle.
For a few breathless seconds Logan watched the fight, glowing with excited approval over his late captive's prowess. Then he realized the time had come when he must take a hand, or find himself again at a disadvantage. Silently he darted upon the screeching, growling heap with his light axe. So skilled was he in all the woodsman's sleights, that even in so brief time as takes to tell it, three more of the pack were down, kicking and dying silently on the snow. The leader of the pack, the side of his neck redly furrowed and the lust of battle hot in his veins, wheeled, and jumped madly at Logan's throat. But the woodsman met him with a terrific short-handled upward stroke, which fairly split his ribs and hurled him over backwards. On the instant the remaining wolves, who had each suffered something in the mêlée, concluded that the game was up. Leaping away from the reach of those deadly-ripping claws, they turned and ran off like whipped dogs.
Bleeding from a dozen gashes, bedraggled and battered, but still full of fight to every outspread claw, the lynx crouched and glared at the man, with ears flattened back and eyes shooting pallid flame. For some seconds the two faced each other, the man grinning with approval. Then it occurred to him that the maddened beast, in despair of escape, might spring at him and compel him to strike, which, in his present sympathetic and grateful mood, he was most unwilling to do. Cautiously, keeping his eyes on the sinister flaring orbs that faced him, he took a step backwards. Still the lynx crouched, ready to spring. Then Logan spoke, in quiet expostulation.
"Don't ye go for to fight me, now! I never done ye no hurt!" he argued mendaciously. "It's them durn wolves, that was after the both of us; an' it was me got ye out of that scrape. Don't ye come lookin' fer trouble, for I don't want to hurt ye!"
At the sound of the quiet voice, soothing yet commanding, the tension of the beast's madness seemed to relax. The fixity of his glare wavered. Then his eyes shifted; and the next moment, turning with a movement so quick that the woodsman's eyes could hardly follow it, he was away like a gray shadow among the stumps and trunks, not leaping, but running belly to ground like a cat. Logan watched him out of sight, then nonchalantly put two wounded wolves out of their misery, whetted his knife on his larrigans, and settled down to the task of stripping the pelts.