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Out from the woods on the other side of the barren came two snow-shoe trails, which advanced with short steps and rested lightly on the snow, as if the makers of the trails were little people whose weight on the snow-shoes made hardly more impression than the broad pads of Moktaques the rabbit.
Like game birds, whether on the nest or sitting quiet in hiding, the rabbits give out far less scent at such times than when they are active; and the cubs, stealing through the dense cover like shadows in imitation of the old wolves, and always hunting upwind, would use their keen noses to locate Moktaques before alarming him.
Upweekis has lost the trail again; he wavers back and forth, like a shadow under a swinging lamp, turning his great head from side to side. He cannot see nor hear nor smell his game; but he saw a bit of snow fly a moment ago, and knows that it came from Moktaques' big pads.
Moktaques jumps straight up in the air. The lynx sees it, whirls, hurls himself at the spot. Another screech, a different one, and then you know that it's all over. And that is why Upweekis' cry is so fierce and sudden on a winter night. Your fire attracts the rabbits. Upweekis knows this, or is perhaps attracted himself and comes also, and hides among the shadows.
Moktaques, the big white hare, who forgets a thing the moment it is past, sees you standing there and is full of curiosity. He forgets that he was being hunted a moment ago, and comes hopping along to see what you are. You back away toward the fire. He scampers off in a fright, but presently comes hopping after you. Watch the underbrush behind him sharply.
Presently a rabbit appeared, hopping along in a crazy way, and ran plump into the jaws of a wolf cub, which leaped up as if out of the ground, and pulled down his game from the very top of the high jump which Moktaques always gives when he is suddenly startled. Another and another rabbit appeared mysteriously, and doubled back into the cover before they could be caught.
Moktaques, full of curiosity, lifted his head cautiously out of the ferns and sat up straight on his haunches again, his paws crossed, his eyes shining in fear and curiosity at the strange animal rustling along and taking the leaves with him.
And then I shall listen with a new interest for a cry in the night which tells me that Moktaques the rabbit is hiding close at hand in the snow, where a young lynx of my acquaintance cannot find him. Hukweem the loon must go through the world crying for what he never gets, and searching for one whom he never finds; for he is the hunting-dog of Clote Scarpe.
As Upweekis has few wits to spare, Moktaques often sees him close at hand, and chuckles in his form under the brown ferns, or sits up straight under the snow-covered hemlock tips, and watches the big lynx at his hunting.
My nose is worse; it cannot smell Seksagadagee the grouse, though I walk over him asleep in the snow. And my feet make a noise in the leaves, so that Moktaques the rabbit hears me, and hides, and laughs behind me when I go to catch him. And I am always hungry. Make me now like the shadows that play, in order that nothing may notice me when I go hunting."
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