All the while Tookhees, who always has just such a turn in his tunnel, and who knows perfectly when he is safe, crouched just below the roots, looking up with steady little eyes, like two black beads, at his savage pursuer, and listening in a kind of dumb terror to his snarls of rage.

Kagax gave it up at last and took to running in circles.  Wider and wider he went, running swift and silent, his nose to the ground, seeking other mice on whom to wreak his vengeance.  Suddenly he struck a fresh trail and ran it straight to the clearing where a foolish field mouse had built a nest in a tangle of dry brakes.  Kagax caught and killed the mother as she rushed out in alarm.  Then he tore the nest open and killed all the little ones.  He tasted the blood of one and went on again.

The failure to catch the wood mouse still rankled in his head and kept his eyes bright red.  Suddenly he turned from his course along the lake shore; he began to climb the ridge.  Up and up he went, crossing a dozen trails that ordinarily he would have followed, till he came to where a dead tree had fallen and lodged against a big spruce, near the summit.  There he crouched in the underbrush and waited.

Up near the top of the dead tree, a pair of pine martens had made their den in the hollow trunk, and reared a family of young martens that drew Kagax’s evil thoughts like a magnet.  The marten belongs to the weasel’s own family; therefore, as a choice bit of revenge, Kagax would rather kill him than anything else.  A score of times he had crouched in this same place and waited for his chance.  But the marten is larger and stronger every way than the weasel, and, though shyer, almost as savage in a fight.  And Kagax was afraid.

But to-night Kagax was in a more vicious mood than ever before; and a weasel’s temper is always the most vicious thing in the woods.  He stole forward at last and put his nose to the foot of the leaning tree.  Two fresh trails went out; none came back.  Kagax followed them far enough to be sure that both martens were away hunting; then he turned and ran like a flash up the incline and into the den.

In a moment he came out, licking his chops greedily.  Inside, the young martens lay just as they had been left by the mother; only they began to grow very cold.  Kagax ran to the great spruce, along a branch into another tree; then to the ground by a dizzy jump.  There he ran swiftly for a good half hour in a long diagonal down towards the lake, crisscrossing his trail here and there as he ran.

Once more his night’s hunting began, with greater zeal than before.  He was hungry now; his nose grew keen as a brier for every trail.  A faint smell stopped him, so faint that the keenest-nosed dog or fox would have passed without turning, the smell of a brooding partridge on her eggs.  There she was, among the roots of a pine, sitting close and blending perfectly with the roots and the brown needles.  Kagax moved like a shadow; his nose found the bird; before she could spring he was on her back, and his teeth had done their evil work.  Once more he tasted the fresh brains with keen relish.  He broke all the eggs, so that none else might profit by his hunting, and went on again.