without saying a word to anybody.

None of the teams had come by for some time; but she could hear faintly
the sound of the axes and the calling of the workmen to each other and
their sharp commands to the horses.

She went away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the
trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy
to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one
sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and
axes sounded from higher up the ridge.

Suddenly she heard something entirely different from the noise of the
woodsmen. It was the snarling voice of a huge cat and almost instantly
Nan sighted the creature which stood upon a snow-covered rock beside the
path. It had tasseled ears, a wide, wicked "smile," bristling whiskers,
and fangs that really made Nan tremble, although she was some yards from
the bobcat.

As she believed, from what her cousins had told her, bobcats are not
usually dangerous. They never seek trouble with man, save under certain
conditions; and that is when a mother cat has kittens to defend.

This was a big female cat, and, although the season was early, she had
littered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leaves
blown by the wind into a hollow tree trunk.

The timberman driving through the hollow had not seen the bobcat and her
three blind babies; but he had roused the mother cat and she was now all
ready to spring at intruders.

That Nan was not the person guilty of disturbing her repose made no
difference to the big cat. She saw the girl standing, affrighted and
trembling, in the path and with a ferocious yowl and leap she crossed
the intervening space and landed in the snow within almost arm's reach
of the fear-paralyzed girl.

Chapter XVI. "INJUN PETE"

Nan Sherwood could not cry out, though she tried. She opened her lips
only to find her throat so constricted by fear that she could not utter
a sound. Perhaps her sudden and utter paralysis was of benefit at
the moment, after all; for she could not possibly have escaped the
infuriated lynx by running.

The creature's own movements were hampered by the deep drift in which
she had landed. The soft snow impeded the cat and, snarling still, she
whirled around and around like a pinwheel to beat a firmer foundation
from which to make her final spring at her victim.

Nan, crouching, put her mittened hands before her face. She sa