It is curious that when Upweekis and his hunting pack pull down game
in this way the first thing they do is to fight over it. There may be
meat enough and to spare, but under their fearful hunger is the old
beastly instinct for each one to grab all for himself; so they fall
promptly to teeth and claws before the game is dead. The fightings at
such times are savage affairs, both to the eye and ear. One forgets
that Upweekis is a shadow, and thinks that he must be a fiend.
One day in winter, when after caribou, I came upon a very large lynx
track, the largest I have ever seen. It was two days old; but it led
in my direction, toward the caribou barrens, and I followed it to see
what I should see.
Presently it joined four other lynx trails, and a mile farther on all
five trails went forward in great flying leaps, each lynx leaving a
hole in the snow as big as a bucket at every jump. A hundred yards of
this kind of traveling and the trails joined another trail,--that of a
wounded caribou from the barrens.
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