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Once, after a glorious long tramp on his trail, I found the spot where he had been sleeping a moment before. But beside that experience I must put fifty other trails that I have followed, of which I never saw the end nor the beginning. And whenever I have found out anything about Upweekis it has generally come unexpectedly, as most good things do.
But he never catches anything unless he blunders onto it. That is why he wanders so much in winter and passes twenty rabbits before he catches one. So when he knows that Moktaques is near, watching the light, but remaining himself invisible, Upweekis crouches for a spring; then he screeches fearfully. Moktaques hears it and is startled, as anybody else would be, hearing such a cry near him.
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.
In summer Upweekis is a solitary creature, rearing his young away back on the wildest burned lands, where game is plenty and where it is almost impossible to find him except by accident.
But Clote Scarpe remembered Moktaques the rabbit also, and gave him two coats, a brown one for summer and a white one for winter. Consequently he is harder than ever to see when he is quiet; and Upweekis must still depend upon his wits to catch him.
For Upweekis too, though generally a solitary fellow, often roams with a savage band of freebooters to hunt the larger animals in the bitter winter weather.
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.
So there would be no time to carry out my long-cherished plan of watching young lynxes at play, as I had before watched young foxes and bears and owls and fish-hawks, and indeed almost everything, except Upweekis, in the wilderness. Presently one of the lucivees came out, yawned, stretched, raised himself against a root.
A look of mock-horror came on her face. "I'm mortally afraid of mice!" "And Meeko may pay you a visit." "The Lord have mercy on me! Who is Meeko?" "Meeko is the red squirrel. He abounds in these woods and his Indian name means the mischief-maker." "I adore squirrels," laughed Helen. "Upweekis will be away just now, so he won't disturb you with his screeching." "And who may Upweekis be?"
You steal away towards the cry, past the little commoosie, or shelter, that you made hastily at sundown when the trail ended. There, with your back to the fire and the commoosie between, the light does not dazzle your eyes; you can trace the shadows creeping in and out stealthily among the underbrush. But if Upweekis is there and he probably is you do not see him. He is a shadow among the shadows.
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