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