showed on the lynx’s silver fur as the wolves’ teeth clicked with the voice of a steel trap and they leaped aside without serious injury.  As the big cat grew blind in his fury they would seize their chance like a flash and leap together; one pair of long jaws would close hard on the spine behind the tufted ears; another pair would grip a hind leg, while the wolves sprang apart and braced to hold.  Then the fight was all over; and the moose birds, in pairs, came flitting in silently to see if there were not a few unconsidered trifles of the feast for them to dispose of.

Occasionally, at nightfall, the wolves’ hunting cry would ring out of the woods as one of the cubs discovered three or four of the lynxes growling horribly over some game they had pulled down together.  For Upweekis too, though generally a solitary fellow, often roams with a savage band of freebooters to hunt the larger animals in the bitter winter weather.  No young wolf would ever run into one of these bands alone; but when the pack rolled in upon them like a tempest the lynxes would leap squalling away in a blind rush; and the two big wolves, cutting in from the ends of the charging line, would turn a lynx kit deftly aside for the cubs to hold.  Then another for themselves, and the hunt was over,—­all but the feast at the end of it.

When a big and cunning lynx took to a tree at the first alarm the wolves would go aside to leeward, where Upweekis could not see them, but where their noses told them perfectly all that he was doing.  Then began the long game of patience, the wolves waiting for the game to come down, and the lynx waiting for the wolves to go away.  Upweekis was at a disadvantage, for he could not see when he had won; and he generally came down in an hour or two, only to find the wolves hot on his trail before he had taken a dozen jumps.  Whereupon he took to another tree and the game began again.

[Illustration:  “The silent, appalling death-watch began.”]

When the night was exceeding cold—­and one who has not felt it can hardly imagine the bitter, killing intensity of a northern midnight in February—­the wolves, instead of going away, would wait under the tree in which the lynx had taken refuge, and the silent, appalling death-watch began.  A lynx, though heavily furred, cannot long remain exposed in the intense cold without moving.  Moreover he must grip the branch on which he sits more or less firmly with his claws, to keep from falling; and the tense muscles, which flex the long claws to drive them into the wood, soon grow weary and numb in the bitter frost.  The wolves meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to keep himself alive.  The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves’ jaws; or else, knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest wolf and dies fighting.