Wilderness Ways — Upweekis the Shadow, Part 2

[Illustration: The lynxes and caribou] As I followed it cautiously, a snarl sounded just ahead.

I kicked off my snowshoes and circled noiselessly to the left, so as to look out over a little opening.

There lay the stripped carcass of the caribou with two lynxes still upon it, growling fearfully at each other as they pulled at the bones.

Another lynx crouched in the snow, under a bush, watching the scene.

Two others circled about each other snarling, looking for an opening, but too well fed to care for a fight just then.

Two or three foxes, a pine marten, and a fisher moved ceaselessly in and out, sniffing hungrily, and waiting for a chance to seize every scrap of bone or skin that was left unguarded for an instant.

Above them a dozen moose birds kept the same watch vigilantly.

As I stole nearer, hoping to get behind an old log where I could lie and watch the spectacle, some creature scurried out of the underbrush at one side.

I was watching the movement, when a loud _kee-yaaah!

_ startled me; I whirled towards the opening.

From behind the old log a fierce round head with tasseled ears rose up, and the big lynx, whose trail I had first followed, sprang into sight snarling and spitting viciously.

The feast stopped at the first alarm.

The marten disappeared instantly.

The foxes and the fisher and one lynx slunk away.

Another, which I had not seen, stalked up to the carcass and put his fore paws upon it, and turned his savage head in my direction.

Evidently other lynxes had come in to the kill beside the five I had followed.

Then all the big cats crouched in the snow and stared at me steadily out of their wild yellow eyes.

It was only for a moment.

The big lynx on my side of the log was in a fighting temper; he snarled continuously.

Another sprang over the log and crouched beside him, facing me.

Then began a curious scene, of which I could not wait to see the end.

The two lynxes hitched nearer and nearer to where I stood motionless, watching.

They would creep forward a step or two, then crouch in the snow, like a cat warming her feet, and stare at me unblinkingly for a few moments.

Then another hitch or two, which brought them nearer, and another stare.

I could not look at one steadily, to make him waver; for the moment my eyes were upon him the others hitched closer; and already two more lynxes were coming over the log.

I had to draw the curtain hastily with a bullet between the yellow eyes of the biggest lynx, and a second straight into the chest of his fellow-starer, just as he wriggled down into the snow for a spring.

The others had leaped away snarling as the first heavy report rolled through the woods.

Another time, in the same region, a solitary lynx made me uncomfortable for half an afternoon.

It was Sunday, and I had gone for a snowshoe tramp, leaving my rifle behind me.

On the way back to camp I stopped for a caribou head and skin, which I had _cached_ on the edge of a barren the morning before.

The weather had changed; a bitter cold wind blew after me as I turned toward camp.

I carried the head with its branching antlers on my shoulder; the skin hung down, to keep my back warm, its edges trailing in the snow.

Gradually I became convinced that something was following me; but I turned several times without seeing anything.

"It is only a fisher," I thought, and kept on steadily, instead of going back to examine my trail; for I was hoping for a glimpse of the cunning creature whose trail you find so often running side by side with your own, and who follows you if you have any trace of game about you, hour after hour through the wilderness, without ever showing himself in the light.

Then I whirled suddenly, obeying an impulse; and there was Upweekis, a big, savage-looking fellow, just gliding up on my trail in plain sight, following the broad snowshoe track and the scent of the fresh caribou skin without difficulty, poor trailer though he be.

He stopped and sat down on his feet, as a lucivee generally does when you surprise him, and stared at me steadily.

When I went on again I knew that he was after me, though he had disappeared from the trail.

Then began a double-quick of four miles, the object being to reach camp before night should fall and give the lucivee the advantage.

It was already late enough to make one a bit uneasy.

He knew that I was hurrying he grew bolder, showing himself openly on the trail behind me.

I turned into an old swamping road, which gave me a bit of open before and behind.

Then I saw him occasionally on either side, or crouching half hid until I passed.

Clearly he was waiting for night;

but to this day I am not sure whether it was the man or the caribou skin upon which he had set his heart.

The scent of flesh and blood was in his nose, and he was too hungry to control himself much longer.

I cut a good club with my big jack-knife, and, watching my chance, threw off the caribou head and jumped for him as he crouched in the snow.

He leaped aside untouched, but crouched again instantly, showing all his teeth, snarling horribly.

Three times I swung at him warily.

Each time he jumped aside and watched for his opening; but I kept the club in play before his eyes, and it was not yet dark enough.

Then I yelled in his face, to teach him fear, and went on again.

Near camp I shouted for Simmo to bring my rifle; but he was slow in understanding, and his answering shout alarmed the savage creature near me.

His movements became instantly more wary, more hidden.

He left the open trail; and once, when I saw him well behind me, his head was raised high, listening.

I threw down the caribou head to keep him busy, and ran for camp.

In a few minutes I was stealing back again with my rifle; but Upweekis had felt the change in the situation and was again among the shadows, where he belongs.

I lost his trail in the darkening woods.

There was another lynx which showed me, one day, a different side to Upweekis' nature.

It was in summer, when every creature in the wilderness seems an altogether different creature from the one you knew last winter, with new habits, new duties, new pleasures, and even a new coat to hide him better from his enemies.

Opposite my island camp, where I halted a little while, in a summer's roving, was a burned ridge; that is, it had been burned over years before; now it was a perfect tangle, with many an open sunny spot, however, where berries grew by handfuls.

Rabbits swarmed there, and grouse were plenty.

As it was forty miles back from the settlements, it seemed a perfect place for Upweekis to make a den in.

And so it was.

I have no doubt there were a dozen litters of kittens on that two miles of ridge; but the cover was so dense that nothing smaller than a deer could be seen moving.

For two weeks I hunted the ridge whenever I was not fishing, stealing in and out among the thickets, depending more upon ears than eyes, but seeing nothing of Upweekis, save here and there a trampled fern, or a blood-splashed leaf, with a bit of rabbit fur, or a great round cat track, to tell the story.

Once I came upon a bear and two cubs among the berries; and once, when the wind was blowing down the hill, I walked almost up to a bull caribou without seeing him.

He was watching my approach curiously, only his eyes, ears, and horns showing above the tangle where he stood.

Down in the coverts it was always intensely still, with a stillness that I took good care not to break.

So when the great brute whirled with a snort and a tremendous crash of bushes, almost under my nose, it raised my hair for a moment, not knowing what the creature was, nor which way he was heading.

But though every day brought its experience, and its knowledge, and its new wonder at the ways of wild things, I found no trace of the den, nor of the kittens I had hoped to watch.

All animals are silent near their little ones, so there was never a cry by night or day to guide me.

Late one afternoon, when I had climbed to the top of the ridge and was on my way back to camp, I ran into an odor, the strong, disagreeable odor that always hovers about the den of a carnivorous animal.

I

followed it through a thicket, and came to an open stony place, with a sharp drop of five or six feet to dense cover below.

The odor came from this cover, so I jumped down; when--_yeow, karrrr, pft-pft!

_ Almost under my feet a gray thing leaped away snarling, followed by another.

I had the merest glimpse of them; but from the way they bristled and spit and arched their backs, I knew that I had stumbled upon a pair of the lynx kittens, for which I had searched so long in vain.

They had, probably, been lying out on the warm stones, until, hearing strange footsteps, they had glided away to cover.

When I crashed down near them they had been scared into showing their temper; else I had never seen them in the underbrush.

Fortunately for me, the fierce old mother was away.

Had she been there, I should undoubtedly have had more serious business on hand than watching her kittens.

They had not seen more of me than my shoes and stockings; so when I stole after them, to see what they were like, they were waiting under a bush to see what I was like.

They jumped away again, spitting, without seeing me, alarmed by the rustle which I could not avoid making in the cover.

So I followed them, just a quiver of leaves here, a snarl there, and then a rush away, until they doubled back towards the rocky place, where, parting the underbrush cautiously, I saw a dark hole among the rocks of a little opening.

The roots of an upturned tree arched over the hole, making a broad doorway.

In this doorway stood two half-grown lucivees, fuzzy and gray and savage-looking, their backs still up, their wild eyes turned in my direction apprehensively.

Seeing me they drew farther back into the den, and I saw nothing more of them save now and then their round heads, or the fire in their yellow eyes.

It was too late for further observation that day.

The fierce old mother lynx would presently be back; they would let her know of the intruder in some way; and they would all keep close in the den.

I

found a place, some dozen yards above, where it would be possible to watch them, marked the spot by a blasted stub, to which I made a compass of broken twigs; and then went back to camp.

Next morning I omitted the early fishing, and was back at the place before the sun looked over the ridge.

Their den was all quiet, in deep shadow.

Mother Lynx was still away on the early hunting.

I intended to kill her when she came back.

My rifle lay ready across my knees.

Then I would watch the kittens a little while, and kill them also.

I wanted their skins, all soft and fine with their first fur.

And they were too big and fierce to think of taking them alive.

My vacation was over.

Simmo was already packing up, to break camp that morning.

So there would be no time to carry out my long-cherished plan of watching young lynxes at play, as I had before watched young foxes and bears and owls and fish-hawks, and indeed almost everything, except Upweekis, in the wilderness.

Presently one of the lucivees came out, yawned, stretched, raised himself against a root.

In the morning stillness I could hear the cut and rip of his claws on the wood.

We call the action sharpening the claws; but it is only the occasional exercise of the fine flexor muscles that a cat uses so seldom, yet must use powerfully when the time comes.

The second lucivee came out of the shadow a moment later and leaped upon the fallen tree where he could better watch the hillside below.

For half an hour or more, while I waited expectantly, both animals moved restlessly about the den, or climbed over the roots and trunk of the fallen tree.

They were plainly cross; they made no attempt at play, but kept well away from each other with a wholesome respect for teeth and claws and temper.

Breakfast hour was long past, evidently, and they were hungry.

Suddenly one, who was at that moment watching from the tree trunk, leaped down; the second joined him, and both paced back and forth excitedly.

They had heard the sounds of a coming that were too fine for my ears.

A stir in the underbrush, and Mother Lynx, a great savage creature, stalked out proudly.

She carried a dead hare gripped across the middle of the back.

The long ears on one side, the long legs on the other, hung limply, showing a fresh kill.

She walked to the doorway of her den, crossed it back and forth two or three times, still carrying the hare as if the lust of blood were raging within her and she could not drop her prey even to her own little ones, which followed her hungrily, one on either side.

Once, as she turned toward me, one of the kittens seized a leg of the hare and jerked it savagely.

The mother whirled on him, growling deep down in her throat;

the youngster backed away, scared but snarling.

At last she flung the game down.

The kittens fell upon it like furies, growling at each other, as I had seen the stranger lynxes growling once before over the caribou.

In a moment they had torn the carcass apart and were crouched, each one over his piece, gnarling like a cat over a rat, and stuffing themselves greedily in utter forgetfulness of the mother lynx, which lay under a bush some distance away and watched them.

In a half hour the savage meal was over.

The little ones sat up, licked their chops, and began to tongue their broad paws.

The mother had been blinking sleepily; now she rose and came to her young.

A

change had come over the family.

The kittens ran to meet the dam as if they had not seen her before, rubbing softly against her legs, or sitting up to rub their whiskers against hers--a tardy thanks for the breakfast she had provided.

The fierce old mother too seemed altogether different.

She arched her back against the roots, purring loudly, while the little ones arched and purred against her sides.

Then she bent her savage head and licked them fondly with her tongue, while they rubbed as close to her as they could get, passing between her legs as under a bridge, and trying to lick her face in return;

till all their tongues were going at once and the family lay down together.

It was time to kill them now.

The rifle lay ready.

But a change had come over the watcher too.

Hitherto he had seen Upweekis as a ferocious brute, whom it was good to kill.

This was altogether different.

Upweekis could be gentle also, it seemed, and give herself for her little ones.

And a bit of tenderness, like that which lay so unconscious under my eyes, gets hold of a man, and spikes his guns better than moralizing.

So the watcher stole away, making as little noise as he could, following his compass of twigs to where the canoes lay ready and Simmo was waiting.

Sometime, I hope, Simmo and I will camp there again, in winter.

And then I shall listen with a new interest for a cry in the night which tells me that Moktaques the rabbit is hiding close at hand in the snow, where a young lynx of my acquaintance cannot find him.

VIII. HUKWEEM THE NIGHT VOICE.