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.