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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10389 ***
+
+NORTHERN TRAILS
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+By
+
+William J. Long
+
+
+_WOOD FOLK SERIES BOOK VI_
+
+
+1905
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In the original preface to "Northern Trails" the author stated that,
+with the solitary exception of the salmon's life in the sea after he
+vanishes from human sight, every incident recorded here is founded
+squarely upon personal and accurate observation of animal life and
+habits. I now repeat and emphasize that statement. Even when the
+observations are, for the reader's sake, put into the form of a
+connected story, there is not one trait or habit mentioned which is not
+true to animal life.
+
+Such a statement ought to be enough, especially as I have repeatedly
+furnished evidence from reliable eye-witnesses to support every
+observation that the critics have challenged; but of late a strenuous
+public attack has been made upon the wolf story in this volume by two
+men claiming to speak with authority. They take radical exception to my
+record of a big white wolf killing a young caribou by snapping at the
+chest and heart. They declared this method of killing to be "a
+mathematical impossibility" and, by inference, a gross falsehood,
+utterly ruinous to true ideas of wolves and of natural history.
+
+As no facts or proofs are given to support this charge, the first thing
+which a sensible man naturally does is to examine the fitness of the
+critics, in order to ascertain upon what knowledge or experience they
+base their dogmatic statements. One of these critics is a man who has no
+personal knowledge of wolves or caribou, who asserts that the animal has
+no possibility of reason or intelligence, and who has for years publicly
+denied the observations of other men which tend to disprove his ancient
+theory. It seems hardly worth while to argue about either wolves or men
+with such a naturalist, or to point out that Descartes' idea of animals,
+as purely mechanical or automatic creatures, has long since been laid
+aside and was never considered seriously by any man who had lived close
+to either wild or domestic animals. The second critic's knowledge of
+wolves consists almost entirely of what he has happened to see when
+chasing the creatures with dogs and hunters. Judging by his own nature
+books, with their barbaric records of slaughter, his experience of wild
+animals was gained while killing them. Such a man will undoubtedly
+discover some things about animals, how they fight and hide and escape
+their human enemies; but it hardly needs any argument to show that the
+man who goes into the woods with dogs and rifles and the desire to kill
+can never understand any living animal.
+
+If you examine now any of the little books which he condemns, you will
+find a totally different story: no record of chasing and killing, but
+only of patient watching, of creeping near to wild animals and winning
+their confidence whenever it is possible, of following them day and
+night with no motive but the pure love of the thing and no object but to
+see exactly what each animal is doing and to understand, so far as a man
+can, the mystery of its dumb life.
+
+Naturally a man in this attitude will see many traits of animal life
+which are hidden from the game-killer as well as from the scientific
+collector of skins. For instance, practically all wild animals are shy
+and timid and run away at man's approach. This is the general experience
+not only of hunters but of casual observers in the woods. Yet my own
+experience has many times shown me exactly the opposite trait: that when
+these same shy animals find me unexpectedly close at hand, more than
+half the time they show no fear whatever but only an eager curiosity to
+know who and what the creature is that sits so quietly near them.
+Sometimes, indeed, they seem almost to understand the mental attitude
+which has no thought of harm but only of sympathy and friendly interest.
+Once I was followed for hours by a young wolf which acted precisely like
+a lost dog, too timid to approach and too curious or lonely to run away.
+He even wagged his tail when I called to him softly. Had I shot him on
+sight, I would probably have foolishly believed that he intended to
+attack me when he came trotting along my trail. Three separate times I
+have touched a wild deer with my hand; once I touched a moose, once an
+eagle, once a bear; and a score of times at least I have had to frighten
+these big animals or get out of their way, when their curiosity brought
+them too near for perfect comfort.
+
+So much for the personal element, for the general attitude and fitness
+of the observer and his critics. But the question is not chiefly a
+personal one; it is simply a matter of truth and observation, and the
+only honest or scientific method is, first, to go straight to nature and
+find out the facts; and then--lest your own eyesight or judgment be at
+fault--to consult other observers to find if, perchance, they also have
+seen the facts exemplified. This is not so easy as to dogmatize or to
+write animal stories; but it is the only safe method, and one which the
+nature writer as well as the scientist must follow if his work is to
+endure.
+
+Following this good method, when the critics had proclaimed that my
+record of a big wolf killing a young caribou by biting into the chest
+and heart was an impossibility, I went straight to the big woods and, as
+soon as the law allowed, secured photographs and exact measurements of
+the first full-grown deer that crossed my trail. These photographs and
+measurements show beyond any possibility of honest doubt the following
+facts: (1) The lower chest of a deer, between and just behind the
+forelegs, is thin and wedge-shaped, exactly as I stated, and the point
+of the heart is well down in this narrow wedge. The distance through the
+chest and point of the heart from side to side was, in this case,
+exactly four and one-half inches. A man's hand, as shown in the
+photograph, can easily grasp the whole lower chest of a deer, placing
+thumb and forefinger over the heart on opposite sides. (2) The heart of
+a deer, and indeed of all ruminant animals, lies close against the chest
+walls and is easily reached and wounded. The chest cartilage, except in
+an old deer, is soft; the ribs are thin and easily crushed, and the
+spaces between the ribs are wide enough to admit a man's finger, to say
+nothing of a wolf's fang. In this case the point of the heart, as the
+deer lay on his side, was barely five eights of an inch from the
+surface. (3) Any dog or wolf, therefore, having a spread of jaws of four
+and one-half inches, and fangs three quarters of an inch long, could
+easily grasp the chest of this deer from beneath and reach the heart
+from either side. As the jaws of the big northern wolf spread from six
+to eight inches and his fangs are over an inch long, to kill a deer in
+this way would require but a slight effort. The chest of a caribou is
+anatomically exactly like that of other deer; only the caribou fawn and
+yearling of "Northern Trails" have smaller chests than the animals I
+measured.
+
+So much for the facts and the possibilities. As for specific instances,
+years ago I found a deer just killed in the snow and beside him the
+fresh tracks of a big wolf, which had probably been frightened away at
+my approach. The deer was bitten just behind and beneath the left
+shoulder, and one long fang had entered the heart. There was not another
+scratch on the body, so far as I could discover. I thought this very
+exceptional at the time; but years afterwards my Indian guide in the
+interior of Newfoundland assured me that it was a common habit of
+killing caribou among the big white wolves with which he was familiar.
+To show that the peculiar habit is not confined to any one section, I
+quote here from the sworn statements of three other eyewitnesses. The
+first is superintendent of the Algonquin National Park, a man who has
+spent a lifetime in the North Woods and who has at present an excellent
+opportunity for observing wild-animal habits; the second is an educated
+Sioux Indian; the third is a geologist and mining engineer, now
+practicing his profession in Philadelphia.
+
+
+ALGONQUIN PARK, ONTARIO, August 31, 1907.
+
+This certifies that during the past thirty years spent in our Canadian
+wilds, I have seen several animals killed by our large timber wolves. In
+the winter of 1903 I saw two deer thus killed on Smoke Lake, Nipissing,
+Ontario. One deer was bitten through the front chest, the other just
+behind the foreleg. In each case there was no other wound on the body.
+
+[Signed] G.W. BARTLETT, _Superintendent_.
+
+
+I certify that I lived for twenty years in northern Nebraska and Dakota,
+in a region where timber wolves were abundant.... I saw one horse that
+had just been killed by a wolf. The front of his chest was torn open to
+the heart. There was no other wound on the body. I once watched a wolf
+kill a stray horse on the open prairie. He kept nipping at the hind
+legs, making the horse turn rapidly till he grew dizzy and fell down.
+Then the wolf snapped or bit into his chest.... The horse died in a few
+moments.
+
+[Signed] STEPHEN JONES (HEPIDAN).
+
+
+I certify that in November, 1900, while surveying in Wyoming, my party
+saw two wolves chase a two-year-old colt over a cliff some fifteen or
+sixteen feet high. I was on the spot with two others immediately after
+the incident occurred. The only injuries to the colt, aside from a
+broken leg, were deep lacerations made by wolf fangs in the chest behind
+the foreshoulder. In addition to this personal observation I have
+frequently heard from hunters, herders, and cowboys that big wolves
+frequently kill deer and other animals by snapping at the chest.
+
+[Signed] F.S. PUSEY.
+
+
+I have more evidence of the same kind from the region which I described
+in "Northern Trails"; but I give these three simply to show that what
+one man discovers as a surprising trait of some individual wolf or deer
+may be common enough when we open our eyes to see. The fact that wolves
+do not always or often kill in this way has nothing to do with the
+question. I know one small region where old wolves generally hunt in
+pairs and, so far as I can discover, one wolf always trips or throws the
+game, while the other invariably does the killing at the throat. In
+another region, including a part of Algonquin Park, in Ontario, I have
+the records of several deer killed by wolves in a single winter; and in
+every case the wolf slipped up behind his game and cut the femoral
+artery, or the inner side of the hind leg, and then drew back quietly,
+allowing the deer to bleed to death.
+
+The point is, that because a thing is unusual or interesting it is not
+necessarily false, as my dogmatic critics would have you believe. I have
+studied animals, not as species but as individuals, and have recorded
+some things which other and better naturalists have overlooked; but I
+have sought for facts, first of all, as zealously as any biologist, and
+have recorded only what I have every reason to believe is true. That
+these facts are unusual means simply that we have at last found natural
+history to be interesting, just as the discovery of unusual men and
+incidents gives charm and meaning to the records of our humanity. There
+may be honest errors or mistakes in these books--and no one tries half
+so hard as the author to find and correct them--but meanwhile the fact
+remains that, though six volumes of the Wood Folk books have already
+been published, only three slight errors have thus far been pointed out,
+and these were promptly and gratefully acknowledged.
+
+The simple truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all
+true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things
+that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are
+not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our
+preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt that romancing is
+rife just now on the part of men who study animals in a library; but
+personally, with my note-books full of incidents which I have never yet
+recorded, I find the truth more interesting, and I cannot understand why
+a man should deliberately choose romance when he can have the greater
+joy of going into the wilderness to see with his own eyes and to
+understand with his own heart just how the animals live. One thing seems
+to me to be more and more certain: that we are only just beginning to
+understand wild animals, and it is chiefly our own barbarism, our lust
+of killing, our stupid stuffed specimens, and especially our prejudices
+which stand in the way of greater knowledge. Meanwhile the critic who
+asserts dogmatically what a wild animal will or will not do under
+certain conditions only proves how carelessly he has watched them and
+how little he has learned of Nature's infinite variety.
+
+WILLIAM J. LONG
+
+STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
+
+THE OLD WOLF'S CHALLENGE
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL BEGINS
+
+NOEL AND MOOKA
+
+THE WAY OF THE WOLF
+
+THE WHITE WOLF'S HUNTING
+
+TRAILS THAT CROSS IN THE SNOW
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
+
+
+
+FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"A QUICK SNAP WHERE THE HEART LAY"
+
+"THE TERRIBLE HOWL OF A GREAT WHITE WOLF"
+
+"WATCHING HER GROWING YOUNGSTERS"
+
+"AS THE MOTHER'S LONG JAWS CLOSED OVER THE SMALL OF THE BACK"
+
+"THE SILENT, APPALLING DEATH-WATCH BEGAN"
+
+
+
+WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
+
+
+
+_The Old Wolf's Challenge_
+
+We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped
+down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the
+mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black
+rocks and the reefs bared their teeth on either side, like the long jaws
+of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed.
+
+In our flight we had picked up a fisherman--snatched him out of his
+helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him
+aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet--and it was
+he who now stood at the wheel of our little schooner and took her
+careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate,
+rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the _Wild Duck_ swung to
+her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and
+clanking her chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At
+sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and
+clear over the dark mountains.
+
+Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the
+foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, every man glad in his
+heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the
+desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness
+brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black
+rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered
+the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver in the
+moonlight; far away, like a vague shadow, a handful of little gray
+houses clung like barnacles to the base of a great bare hill whose foot
+was in the sea and whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not a
+light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from these little
+houses, whose shells close daily at twilight over the life within, weary
+with the day's work. Only the dogs were restless--those strange
+creatures that shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in
+another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out from ours by
+impassable barriers.
+
+For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry
+brutes that drew the sledges in winter and that picked up a vagabond
+living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's
+flakes and pig-pens and by catching flounders in the sea as the tide
+ebbed. Venture among them with fear in your heart and they would fly at
+your legs and throat like wild beasts; but twirl a big stick jauntily,
+or better still go quietly on your way without concern, and they would
+skulk aside and watch you hungrily out of the corners of their surly
+eyes, whose lids were red and bloodshot as a mastiff's. When the moon
+rose I noticed them flitting about like witches on the lonely shore,
+miles away from the hamlet; now sitting on their tails in a solemn
+circle; now howling all together as if demented, and anon listening
+intently in the vast silence, as if they heard or smelled or perhaps
+just felt the presence of some unknown thing that was hidden from human
+senses. And when I paddled ashore to watch them one ran swiftly past
+without heeding me, his nose outstretched, his eyes green as foxfire in
+the moonlight, while the others vanished like shadows among the black
+rocks, each intent on his unknown quest.
+
+That is why I had come up from my warm bunk at midnight to sit alone on
+the taffrail, listening in the keen air to the howling that made me
+shiver, spite of myself, and watching in the vague moonlight to
+understand if possible what the brutes felt amid the primal silence and
+desolation.
+
+A long interval of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make
+out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when
+suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the
+mountains, _ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ a long wailing crescendo beginning
+softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the
+sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to
+crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into
+indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to
+certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping
+within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased
+abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks. From
+far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the
+cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep. Then
+silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a
+winding-sheet.
+
+As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept
+undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the
+foremast. As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the
+night he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching
+alone. "Das Wayeeses. I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh, long,
+long while ago," he whispered. And taking my marine glasses he stood
+beside me watching intently.
+
+[Illustration: "The terrible howl of the great white wolf"]
+
+There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled as
+they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we turned
+our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for the
+challenge. Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught something
+moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain. A shadow with the slinking
+trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the moon. Just in
+front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a pointed nose up
+to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight,
+and--_ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ the terrible howl of a great white wolf
+tumbled down on the husky dogs and set them howling as if possessed. No
+doubt now of their queer actions which had puzzled me for hours past.
+The wild wolf had called and the tame wolves waked to answer. Before my
+dull ears had heard a rumor of it they were crazy with the excitement.
+Now every chord in their wild hearts was twanging its thrilling answer
+to the leader's summons, and my own heart awoke and thrilled as it never
+did before to the call of a wild beast.
+
+For an hour or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate
+mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be
+free again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs,
+which refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from
+overmastering temptation. Then the shadow vanished from the big rock on
+the mountain, the huskies fled away wildly from the shore, and only the
+sob of the breakers broke the stillness.
+
+That was my first (and Noel's last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the
+huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea to
+study. All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed him,
+guided sometimes by a rumor--a hunter's story or a postman's fright,
+caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with his dogs
+through the long winter night--and again by a track on the shore of some
+lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou flying wildly
+from some unseen danger. Here is the white wolf's story, learned partly
+from much watching and following his tracks alone, but more from Noel
+the Indian hunter, in endless tramps over the hills and caribou marshes
+and in long quiet talks in the firelight beside the salmon rivers.
+
+
+
+_Where the Trail Begins_
+
+From a cave in the rocks, on the unnamed mountains that tower over
+Harbor Weal on the north and east, a huge mother wolf appeared,
+stealthily, as all wolves come out of their dens. A pair of green eyes
+glowed steadily like coals deep within the dark entrance; a massive gray
+head rested unseen against the lichens of a gray rock; then the whole
+gaunt body glided like a passing cloud shadow into the June sunshine and
+was lost in a cleft of the rocks.
+
+There, in the deep shadow where no eye might notice the movement, the
+old wolf shook off the delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all
+her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the
+toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders
+till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out
+straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little
+jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and
+showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs
+that could reach a deer's heart in a single snap. Then she leaped upon a
+great rock and sat up straight, with her bushy tail curled close about
+her fore paws, a savage, powerful, noble-looking beast, peering down
+gravely over the green mountains to the shining sea.
+
+A moment before the hillside had appeared utterly lifeless, so still and
+rugged and desolate that one must notice and welcome the stir of a mouse
+or ground squirrel in the moss, speaking of life that is glad and free
+and vigorous even in the deepest solitudes; yet now, so quietly did the
+old wolf appear, so perfectly did her rough gray coat blend with the
+rough gray rocks, that the hillside seemed just as tenantless as before.
+A stray wind seemed to move the mosses, that was all. Only where the
+mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw every
+moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats
+far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every
+chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was
+holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For
+the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world,
+and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite
+precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid.
+
+A faint breeze from the west strayed over the mountains and instantly
+the old wolf turned her sensitive nose to question it. There on her
+right, and just across a deep ravine where a torrent went leaping down
+to the sea in hundred-foot jumps, a great stag caribou was standing,
+still as a stone, on a lofty pinnacle, looking down over the marvelous
+panorama spread wide beneath his feet. Every day Megaleep came there to
+look, and the old wolf in her daily hunts often crossed the deep path
+which he had worn through the moss from the wide table-lands over the
+ridge to this sightly place where he could look down curiously at the
+comings and goings of men on the sea. But at this season when small game
+was abundant--and indeed at all seasons when not hunger-driven--the wolf
+was peaceable and the caribou were not molested. Indeed the big stag
+knew well where the old wolf denned. Every east wind brought her message
+to his nostrils; but secure in his own strength and in the general peace
+which prevails in the summer-time among all large animals of the north,
+he came daily to look down on the harbor and wag his ears at the
+fishing-boats, which he could never understand.
+
+Strange neighbors these, the grim, savage mother wolf of the mountains,
+hiding her young in dens of the rocks, and the wary, magnificent
+wanderer of the broad caribou barrens; but they understood each other,
+and neither wolf nor caribou had any fear or hostile intent one for the
+other. And this is not strange at all, as might be supposed by those who
+think animals are governed by fear on one hand and savage cruelty on the
+other, but is one of the commonest things to be found by those who
+follow faithfully the northern trails.
+
+Wayeeses had chosen her den well, on the edge of the untrodden
+solitudes--sixty miles as the crow flies--that stretch northward from
+Harbor Weal to Harbor Woe. It was just under the ridge, in a sunny
+hollow among the rocks, on the southern slope of the great mountains.
+The earliest sunshine found the place and warmed it, bringing forth the
+bluebells for a carpet, while in every dark hollow the snow lingered all
+summer long, making dazzling white patches on the mountain; and under
+the high waterfalls, that looked from the harbor like bits of silver
+ribbon stretched over the green woods, the ice clung to the rocks in
+fantastic knobs and gargoyles, making cold, deep pools for the trout to
+play in. So it was both cool and warm there, and whatever the weather
+the gaunt old mother wolf could always find just the right spot to sleep
+away the afternoon. Best of all it was perfectly safe; for though from
+the door of her den she could look down on the old Indian's cabin, like
+a pebble on the shore, so steep were the billowing hills and so
+impassable the ravines that no human foot ever trod the place, not even
+in autumn when the fishermen left their boats at anchor in Harbor Weal
+and camped inland on the paths of the big caribou herds.
+
+Whether or not the father wolf ever knew where his cubs were hidden only
+he himself could tell. He was an enormous brute, powerful and cunning
+beyond measure, that haunted the lonely thickets and ponds bordering the
+great caribou barrens over the ridge, and that kept a silent watch,
+within howling distance, over the den which he never saw. Sometimes the
+mother wolf met him on her wanderings and they hunted together. Often he
+brought the game he had caught, a fox or a young goose; and sometimes
+when she had hunted in vain he met her, as if he had understood her need
+from a distance, and led her to where he had buried two or three of the
+rabbits that swarmed in the thickets. But spite of the attention and the
+indifferent watch which he kept, he never ventured near the den, which
+he could have found easily enough by following the mother's track. The
+old she-wolf would have flown at his throat like a fury had he showed
+his head over the top of the ridge.
+
+The reason for this was simple enough to the savage old mother, though
+there are some things about it that men do not yet understand. Wolves,
+like cats and foxes, and indeed like most wild male animals, have an
+atrocious way of killing their own young when they find them
+unprotected; so the mother animal searches out a den by herself and
+rarely allows the male to come near it. Spite of this beastly habit it
+must be said honestly of the old he-wolf that he shows a marvelous
+gentleness towards his mate. He runs at the slightest show of teeth from
+a mother wolf half his size, and will stand meekly a snap of the jaws or
+a cruel gash of the terrible fangs in his flank without defending
+himself. Even our hounds seem to have inherited something of this
+primitive wolf trait, for there are seasons when, unless urged on by
+men, they will not trouble a mother wolf or fox. Many times, in the
+early spring, when foxes are mating, and again later when they are heavy
+with young and incapable of a hard run, I have caught my hounds trotting
+meekly after a mother fox, sniffing her trail indifferently and sitting
+down with heads turned aside when she stops for a moment to watch and
+yap at them disdainfully. And when you call them they come shamefaced;
+though in winter-time, when running the same fox to death, they pay no
+more heed to your call than to the crows clamoring over them. But we
+must return to Wayeeses, sitting over her den on a great gray rock,
+trying every breeze, searching every movement, harking to every chirp
+and rustle before bringing her cubs out into the world.
+
+Satisfied at last with her silent investigation she turned her head
+towards the den. There was no sound, only one of those silent, unknown
+communications that pass between animals. Instantly there was a
+scratching, scurrying, whining, and three cubs tumbled out of the dark
+hole in the rocks, with fuzzy yellow fur and bright eyes and sharp ears
+and noses, like collies, all blinking and wondering and suddenly silent
+at the big bright world which they had never seen before, so different
+from the dark den under the rocks.
+
+Indeed it was a marvelous world that the little cubs looked upon when
+they came out to blink and wonder in the June sunshine. Contrasts
+everywhere, that made the world seem too big for one little glance to
+comprehend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and quivered on
+the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud shadows rested for hours, as if
+asleep, or swept over the mountain side in an endless game of
+fox-and-geese with the sunbeams. Here the birds trilled, the bees hummed
+in the bluebells, the brook roared and sang on its way to the sea; while
+over all the harmony of the world brooded a silence too great to be
+disturbed. Sunlight and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines and
+dazzling mountain tops, mayflowers and singing birds and rustling winds
+filled all the earth with color and movement and melody. From under
+their very feet great masses of rock, tossed and tumbled as by a giant's
+play, stretched downwards to where the green woods began and rolled in
+vast billows to the harbor, which shone and sparkled in the sun, yet
+seemed no bigger than their mother's paw. Fishing-boats with shining
+sails hovered over it, like dragon-flies, going and coming from the
+little houses that sheltered together under the opposite mountain, like
+a cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine stump. Most wonderful,
+most interesting of all was the little gray hut on the shore, almost
+under their feet, where little Noel and the Indian children played with
+the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the fishermen
+in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf cubs are like collies in this, that they
+seem to have a natural interest, perhaps a natural kinship with man, and
+next to their own kind nothing arouses their interest like a group of
+children playing.
+
+So the little cubs took their first glimpse of the big world, of
+mountains and sea and sunshine, and children playing on the shore, and
+the world was altogether too wonderful for little heads to comprehend.
+Nevertheless one plain impression remained, the same that you see in the
+ears and nose and stumbling feet and wagging tail of every puppy-dog you
+meet on the streets, that this bright world is a famous place, just made
+a-purpose for little ones to play in. Sitting on their tails in a solemn
+row the wolf cubs bent their heads and pointed their noses gravely at
+the sea. There it was, all silver and blue and boundless, with tiny
+white sails dancing over it, winking and flashing like entangled bits of
+sunshine; and since the eyes of a cub, like those of a little child,
+cannot judge distances, one stretched a paw at the nearest sail, miles
+away, to turn it over and make it go the other way. They turned up their
+heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite,
+with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one
+stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to
+pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near
+them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday,
+and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took
+to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over each
+other, while the gaunt old mother wolf looked down from her rock and
+watched and was satisfied.
+
+
+
+_Noel and Mooka_
+
+Down on the shore, that same bright June afternoon, little Noel and his
+sister Mooka were going on wonderful sledge journeys, meeting wolves and
+polar bears and caribou and all sorts of adventures, more wonderful by
+far than any that ever came to imagination astride of a rocking-horse.
+They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the
+rest,--five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a
+tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a
+bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand,
+waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside,
+cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar! Hiya, Wolf! Hi, hiya,
+hiya, yeeee!"--and then shrieking with laughter as the sledge overturned
+and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness,
+just like the husky dogs in winter. Mooka was trying to untangle them,
+dancing about to keep her bare toes and fingers away from the nipping
+claws, when she jumped up with a yell, the biggest crab hanging to the
+end of her finger.
+
+"Owee! oweeeee! Caesar bit me," she wailed. Then she stopped, with
+finger in her mouth, while Caesar scrambled headlong into the tide; for
+Noel was standing on the beach pointing at a brown sail far down in the
+deep bay, where Southeast Brook came singing from the green wilderness.
+
+"Ohé, Mooka! there's father and Old Tomah come back from salmon
+fishing."
+
+"Let's go meet um, little brother," said Mooka, her black eyes dancing;
+and in a wink crabs and sledges were forgotten. The old punt was off in
+a shake, the tattered sail up, skipper Noel lounging in the stern, like
+an old salt, with the steering oar, while the crew, forgetting her
+nipped finger, tugged valiantly at the main-sheet.
+
+They were scooting away gloriously, rising and pounding the waves, when
+Mooka, who did not have to steer and whose restless glance was roving
+over every bay and hillside, jumped up, her eyes round as lynx's.
+
+"Look, Noel, look! There's Megaleep again watching us." And Noel,
+following her finger, saw far up on the mountain a stag caribou, small
+and fine and clear as a cameo against the blue sky, where they had so
+often noticed him with wonder watching them as they came shouting home
+with the tide. Instantly Noel threw himself against the steering oar;
+the punt came up floundering and shaking in the wind.
+
+"Come on, little sister; we can go up Fox Brook. Tomah showed me trail."
+And forgetting the salmon, as they had a moment before forgotten the
+crabs and sledges, these two children of the wild, following every
+breeze and bird call and blossoming bluebell and shining star alike,
+tumbled ashore and went hurrying up the brook, splashing through the
+shallows, darting like kingfishers over the points, and jumping like
+wild goats from rock to rock. In an hour they were far up the mountain,
+lying side by side on a great flat rock, looking across a deep
+impassable valley and over two rounded hilltops, where the scrub spruces
+looked like pins on a cushion, to the bare, rugged hillside where
+Megaleep stood out like a watchman against the blue sky.
+
+"Does he see us, little brother?" whispered Mooka, quivering with
+excitement and panting from the rapid climb.
+
+"See us? sartin, little sister; but that only make him want peek um some
+more," said the little hunter. And raised carelessly on his elbows he
+was telling Mooka how Megaleep the caribou trusted only his nose, and
+how he watched and played peekaboo with anything which he could not
+smell, and how in a snowstorm--
+
+Noel was off now like a brook, babbling a deal of caribou lore which he
+had learned from Old Tomah the hunter, when Mooka, whose restless black
+eyes were always wandering, seized his arm.
+
+"Hush, brother, and look, oh, look! there on the big rock!"
+
+Noel's eyes had already caught the Indian trick of seeing only what they
+look for, and so of separating an animal instantly from his
+surroundings, however well he hides. That is why the whole hillside
+seemed suddenly to vanish, spruces and harebells, snow-fields and
+drifting white clouds all grouping themselves, like the unnoticed frame
+of a picture, around a great gray rock with a huge shaggy she-wolf
+keeping watch over it, silent, alert, motionless.
+
+Something stirred in the shadow of the old wolf's watch-tower, tossing
+and eddying and growing suddenly quiet, as if the wind were playing
+among dead oak leaves. The keen young eyes saw it instantly, dilating
+with surprise and excitement. The next instant they had clutched each
+other's arms.
+
+"Ooooo!" from Mooka.
+
+"Cubs; keep still!" from Noel.
+
+And shrinking close to the rock under a friendly dwarf spruce they lay
+still as two rabbits, watching with round eyes, eager but unafraid, the
+antics of three brown wolf cubs that were chasing the flies and tumbling
+over some invisible plaything before the door of the den.
+
+Hardly had they made the discovery when the old wolf slipped down from
+the rock and stood for an instant over her little ones. Why the play
+should stop now, while the breeze was still their comrade and the
+sunshine was brighter than ever, or why they should steal away into the
+dark den more silently than they had come, none of the cubs could tell.
+They felt the order and they obeyed instantly--and that is always the
+wonder of watching little wild things at play. The old mother wolf
+vanished among the rocks and appeared again higher on the ridge, turning
+her head uneasily to try every breeze and rustle and moving shadow. Then
+she went questing into the spruce woods, feeling but not understanding
+some subtle excitement in the air that was not there before, and only
+the two Indian children were left keeping watch over the great wild
+hillside.
+
+For over an hour they lay there expectantly, but nothing stirred near
+the den; then they too slipped away, silently as the little wild things,
+and made their slow way down the brook, hand in hand in the deepening
+shadows. Scarcely had they gone when the bushes stirred and the old
+she-wolf, that had been ranging every ridge and valley since she
+disappeared at the unknown alarm, glided over the spot where a moment
+before Mooka and Noel had been watching. Swiftly, silently she followed
+their steps; found the old trails coming up and the fresh trails
+returning; then, sure at last that no danger threatened her own little
+ones, she loped away up the hill and over the topmost ridge to the
+caribou barrens and the thickets where young rabbits were already
+stirring about in the twilight.
+
+That night, in the cabin under the cliffs, Old Tomah had to rehearse
+again all the wolf lore learned in sixty years of hunting: how,
+fortunately for the deer, these enormous wolves had never been abundant
+and were now very rare, a few having been shot, and more poisoned in the
+starving times, and the rest having vanished, mysteriously as wolves do,
+for some unknown reason. Bears, which are easily trapped and shot and
+whose skins are worth each a month's wages to the fishermen, still hold
+their own and even increase on the great island; while the wolves, once
+more numerous, are slowly vanishing, though they are never hunted, and
+not even Old Tomah himself could set a trap cunningly enough to catch
+one. The old hunter told, while Mooka and Noel held their breaths and
+drew closer to the light, how once, when he made his camp alone under a
+cliff on the lake shore, seven huge wolves, white as the snow, came
+racing swift and silent over the ice straight at the fire which he had
+barely time to kindle; how he shot two, and the others, seizing the fish
+he had just caught through the ice for his own supper, vanished over the
+bank; and he could not say even now whether they meant him harm or no.
+Again, as he talked and the grim old face lighted up at the memory, they
+saw him crouched with his sledge-dogs by a blazing fire all the long
+winter night, and around him in the darkness blazing points of light,
+the eyes of wolves flashing back the firelight, and gaunt white forms
+flitting about like shadows, drawing nearer and nearer with ever-growing
+boldness till they seized his largest dog--though the brute lay so near
+the fire that his hair singed--and whisked it away with an appalling
+outcry. And still again, when Tomah was lost three days in the interior,
+they saw him wandering with his pack over endless barrens and through
+gloomy spruce woods, and near him all the time a young wolf that
+followed his steps quietly, with half-friendly interest, and came no
+nearer day or night.
+
+All these things and many more the children heard from Old Tomah, and
+among all his hunting experiences and the stories and legends which he
+told them there was not one to make them afraid. For the horrible story
+of Red Riding Hood is not known among the Indians, who know well how
+untrue the tale is to wolf nature, and how foolish it is to frighten
+children with false stories of wolves and bears, misrepresenting them as
+savage and bloodthirsty brutes, when in truth they are but shy,
+peace-loving animals, whose only motive toward man, except when crazed
+by wounds or hunger, is one of childish curiosity. All these ferocious
+animal stories have their origin in other centuries and in distant
+lands, where they may possibly have been true, but more probably are
+just as false to animal nature; for they seem to reflect not the shy
+animal that men glimpsed in the woods, but rather the boastings of some
+hunter, who always magnifies his own praise by increasing the ferocity
+of the game he has killed, or else the pure imagination of some ancient
+nurse who tried to increase her scant authority by frightening her
+children with terrible tales. Here certainly the Indian attitude of
+kinship, gained by long centuries of living near to the animals and
+watching them closely, comes nearer to the truth of things. That is why
+little Mooka and Noel could listen for hours to Old Tomah's animal
+stories and then go away to bed and happy dreams, longing for the light
+so that they might be off again to watch at the wolf's den.
+
+One thing only disturbed them for a moment. Even these children had wolf
+memories and vied with Old Tomah in eagerness of telling. They
+remembered one fearful winter, years ago, when most of the families of
+the little fishing village on the East Harbor had moved far inland to
+sheltered cabins in the deep woods to escape the cold and the fearful
+blizzards of the coast. One still moonlit night, when the snow lay deep
+and the cold was intense and all the trees were cracking like pistols in
+the frost, a mournful howling rose all around their little cabin. Light
+footfalls sounded on the crust; there were scratchings at the very door
+and hoarse breathings at every crack; while the dogs, with hackles up
+straight and stiff on their necks, fled howling under beds and tables.
+And when Mooka and Noel went fearfully with their mother to the little
+window--for the men were far away on a caribou hunt--there were gaunt
+white wolves, five or six of them, flitting restlessly about in the
+moonlight, scratching at the cracks and even raising themselves on their
+hind legs to look in at the little windows.
+
+Mooka shivered a bit when she remembered the uncanny scene, and felt
+again the strong pressure of her mother's arms holding her close; but
+Old Tomah brushed away her fears with a smile and a word, as he had
+always done when, as little children, they had showed fear at the
+thunder or the gale or the cry of a wild beast in the night, till they
+had grown to look upon all Nature's phenomena as hiding a smile as
+kindly as that of Old Tomah himself, who had a face wrinkled and
+terribly grim, to be sure, but who could smile and tell a story so that
+every child trusted him. The wolves were hungry, starving hungry, he
+said, and wanted only a dog, or one of the pigs. And Mooka remembered
+with a bright laugh the two unruly pigs that had been taken inland as a
+hostage to famine, and that must be carefully guarded from the teeth of
+hungry prowlers, for they would soon be needed to keep the children
+themselves from starving. Every night at early sunset, when the trees
+began to groan and the keen winds from the mountains came whispering
+through the woods, the two pigs were taken into the snug kitchen, where
+with the dogs they slept so close to the stove that she could always
+smell pork a-frying. Not a husky dog there but would have killed and
+eaten one of these little pigs if he could have caught him around the
+corner of the house after nightfall, though you would never have
+suspected it if you had seen them so close together, keeping each other
+warm after the fire went out. And besides the dogs and the wolves there
+were lynxes--big, round-headed, savage-looking creatures--that came
+prowling out of the deep woods every night, hungry for a taste of the
+little pigs; and now and then an enormous polar bear, that had landed
+from an iceberg, would shuffle swiftly and fearlessly among the handful
+of little cabins, leaving his great footprints in every yard and tearing
+to pieces, as if made of straw, the heavy log pens to which some of the
+fishermen had foolishly confided their pigs or sheep. He even entered
+the woodsheds and rummaged about after a stray fishbone or an old
+sealskin boot, making a great rowdydow in the still night; and only the
+smell of man, or the report of an old gun fired at him by some brave
+woman out of the half-open window, kept him from pushing his enormous
+weight against the very doors of the cabins.
+
+Thinking of all these things, Mooka forgot her fears of the white
+wolves, remembering with a kind of sympathy how hungry all these shy
+prowlers must be to leave their own haunts, whence the rabbits and seals
+had vanished, and venture boldly into the yards of men. As for Noel, he
+remembered with regret that he was too small at the time to use the long
+bow which he now carried on his rabbit and goose hunts; and as he took
+it from the wall, thrumming its chord of caribou sinew and fingering the
+sharp edge of a long arrow, he was hoping for just such another winter,
+longing to try his skill and strength on some of these midnight
+prowlers--a lynx, perhaps, not to begin too largely on a polar bear. So
+there was no fear at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed
+up the brook next day to watch at the wolf's den. And even when Noel
+found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog's,
+in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently
+following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed
+Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.
+
+Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under
+the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side
+they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more
+interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding
+the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in
+wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also
+something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down
+gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters. Once they
+brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and
+through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was
+larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear,
+like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.
+Mooka claimed that wolf instantly for her own, as if they were watching
+the husky puppies, and by his broken ear said she should know him again
+when he grew to be a big wolf, if he should ever follow her, as his
+father perhaps had followed Old Tomah; but Noel, thinking of his bow and
+his long arrow with the sharp point, thought of the winter night long
+ago and hoped that his two wolves would know enough to keep away when
+the pack came again, for he did not see any way to recognize and spare
+them, especially in the moonlight. So they lay there making plans and
+dreaming dreams, gentle or savage, for the little cubs that played with
+the feathers and grasshoppers and cloud shadows, all unconscious that
+any eyes but their mother's saw or cared for their wild, free playing.
+
+[Illustration: "Watching her growing youngsters"]
+
+Something bothered the old she-wolf in these days of watching. The den
+was still secure, for no human foot had crossed the deep ravine or
+ventured nearer than the opposite hilltop. Her nose told her that
+unmistakably; but still she was uneasy, and whenever the cubs were
+playing she felt, without knowing why, that she was being watched. When
+she trailed over all the ridges in the twilight, seeking to know if
+enemies had been near, she found always the scent of two human beings on
+a flat rock under the dwarf spruces; and there were always the two
+trails coming up and going down the brook. She followed once close
+behind the two children, seeing them plainly all the way, till they came
+in sight of the little cabin under the cliff, and from the door her
+enemy man came out to meet them. For these two little ones, whose trail
+she knew, the old she-wolf, like most mother animals in the presence of
+children, felt no fear nor enmity whatever. But they watched her den and
+her own little ones, that was sure enough; and why should any one watch
+a den except to enter some time and destroy? That is a question which no
+mother wolf could ever answer; for the wild animals, unlike dogs and
+blue jays and men, mind strictly their own business and pay no attention
+to other animals. They hate also to be watched; for the thought of
+watching always suggests to their minds that which follows,--the hunt,
+the rush, the wild break-away, and the run for life. Had she not herself
+watched a hundred times at the rabbit's form, the fox's runway, the deer
+path, the wild-goose nest? What could she expect for her own little
+ones, therefore, when the man cubs, beings of larger reach and unknown
+power, came daily to watch at her den?
+
+All this unanswered puzzle must have passed through the old wolf's head
+as she trotted up the brook away from the Indian cabin in the twilight.
+When in doubt trust your fears,--that is wolf wisdom in a nutshell; and
+that marks the difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance,
+which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity. So the old wolf took
+counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them
+one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over
+rocks and ravines and spruce thickets, to another den where no human eye
+ever looked upon their play.
+
+"Shall we see them again, little brother?" said Mooka wistfully, when
+they had climbed to their watch-tower for the third time and seen
+nothing. And Noel made confident answer:
+
+"Oh, yes, we see um again, lil sister. Wayeeses got um wandering foot;
+go 'way off long ways; bimeby come back on same trail. He jus' like
+Injun, like um old camp best. Oh, yes, sartin we see um again." But
+Noel's eyes looked far away as he spoke, and in his heart he was
+thinking of his bow and his long arrow with the sharp point, and of a
+moonlit night with white shapes flitting noiselessly over the snow and
+scratching at the door of the little cabin.
+
+
+
+_The Way of The Wolf_
+
+A new experience had come to the little wolf cubs in a single
+night,--the experience of fear. For weeks they had lain hid in the dark
+den, or played fearlessly in the bright sunshine, guarded and kept at
+every moment, day or night, by the gaunt old mother wolf that was their
+only law, their only companion. At times they lay for hours hungry and
+restless, longing to go out into the bright world, yet obeying a
+stronger will than their own, even at a distance. For, once a wild
+mother in her own dumb way has bidden her little ones lie still, they
+rarely stir from the spot, refusing even to be dragged away from the
+nest or den, knowing well the punishment in store if she return and find
+them absent. Moreover, it is useless to dissimulate, to go out and play
+and then to be sleeping innocently with the cubs when the old wolf's
+shadow darkens the entrance. No concealment is possible from wolf's
+nose; before she enters the den the mother knows perfectly all that has
+happened since she went away. So the days glided by peacefully between
+sleep and play, the cubs trusting absolutely in the strength and
+tenderness that watched over them, the mother building the cubs' future
+on the foundation of the two instincts which are strong in every wild
+creature born into a world of danger,--the instinct to lie still and let
+nature's coloring hide all defenseless little ones, and the instinct to
+obey instantly a stronger will than their own.
+
+There was no fear as yet, only instinctive wariness; for fear comes
+largely from others' example, from alarms and excitement and cries of
+danger, which only the grown animals understand. The old wolf had been
+undisturbed; no dog or hunter had chased her; no trap or pitfall had
+entangled her swift feet. Moreover, she had chosen her den well, where
+no man had ever stood, and where only the eyes of two children had seen
+her at a distance. So the little ones grew and played in the sunshine,
+and had yet to learn what fear meant.
+
+One day at dusk the mother entered swiftly and, without giving them food
+as she had always done, seized a cub and disappeared. For the little
+one, which had never before ventured beyond sight of the den, it was a
+long journey indeed that followed,--miles and miles beside roaring
+brooks and mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light
+entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his
+ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother's great jaws. An
+owl hooted dismally, _whoo-hooo!_ and though he knew the sound well in
+his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver. The wind went
+sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird chirped
+and whirred away out of their path; the brook roared among the rocks; a
+big salmon jumped and tumbled back with resounding splash, and jumped
+again as if the otter were after him. There was a sudden sharp cry, the
+first and last voice of a hare when the weasel rises up in front of him;
+then silence, and the fitful rustle of his mother's pads moving
+steadily, swiftly over dry leaves. And all these sounds of the
+wilderness night spoke to the little cub of some new thing, of swift
+feet that follow and of something unknown and terrible that waits for
+all unwary wild things. So fear was born.
+
+The long journey ended at last before a dark hole in the hillside; and
+the smell of his mother, the only familiar thing in his first strange
+pilgrimage, greeted the cub from the rocks on either side as he passed
+in out of the starlight. He was dropped without a sound in a larger den,
+on some fresh-gathered leaves and dead grass, and lay there all alone,
+very still, with the new feeling trembling all over him. A long hour
+passed; a second cub was laid beside him, and the mother vanished as
+before; another hour, and the wolf cubs were all together again with the
+mother feeding them. Nor did any of them know where they were, nor why
+they had come, nor the long, long way that led back to where the trail
+began.
+
+Next day when they were called out to play they saw a different and more
+gloomy landscape, a chaos of granite rocks, a forest of evergreen, the
+white plunge and rolling mist of a mountain torrent; but no silver sea
+with fishing-boats drifting over it, like clouds in the sea over their
+heads, and no gray hut with children running about like ants on the
+distant shore. And as they played they began for the first time to
+imitate the old mother keeping guard over them, sitting up often to
+watch and listen and sift the winds, trying to understand what fear was,
+and why they had been taken away from the sunny hillside where the world
+was so much bigger and brighter than here. But home is where mother
+is,--that, fortunately, is also true of the little Wood Folk, who
+understand it in their own savage way for a season,--and in their wonder
+at their new surroundings the memory of the old home gradually faded
+away. They never knew with what endless care the new den had been
+chosen; how the mother, in the days when she knew she was watched, had
+searched it out and watched over it and put her nose to every ridge and
+ravine and brook-side, day after day, till she was sure that no foot
+save that of the wild things had touched the soil within miles of the
+place. They felt only a greater wildness, a deeper solitude; and they
+never forgot, though they were unmolested, the strange feeling that was
+born in them on that first terrifying night journey in their mother's
+jaws.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon the food that was brought home at dawn--the rabbit or grouse, or
+the bunch of rats hanging by their tails, with which the mother
+supplemented their midday drink of milk--became altogether too scant to
+satisfy their clamorous appetites; and in the bright afternoons and the
+long summer twilights the mother led them forth on short journeys to
+hunt for themselves. No big caribou or cunning fox cub, as one might
+suppose, but "rats and mice and such small deer" were the limit of the
+mother's ambition for her little ones. They began on stupid grubs that
+one could find asleep under stones and roots, and then on beetles that
+scrambled away briskly at the first alarm, and then, when the sunshine
+was brightest, on grasshoppers,--lively, wary fellows that zipped and
+buzzed away just when you were sure you had them, and that generally
+landed from an astounding jump facing in a different direction, like a
+flea, so as to be ready for your next move.
+
+It was astonishing how quickly the cubs learned that game is not to be
+picked up tamely, like huckleberries, and changed their style of
+hunting,--creeping, instead of trotting openly so that even a porcupine
+must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till
+the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on
+a ptarmigan. A wolf that cannot catch a grasshopper has no business
+hunting rabbits--this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led the
+old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was
+hiding plentifully and take her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the
+edge of the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted
+elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping
+up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or
+snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a
+back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their
+heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like
+exclamation points, to find another grasshopper.
+
+Small business indeed and often ludicrous, this playing at grasshopper
+hunting. So it seems to us; so also, perhaps, to the wise old mother,
+which knew all the ways of game, from crickets to caribou and from
+ground sparrows to wild geese. But play is the first great
+educator,--that is as true of animals as of men,--and to the cubs their
+rough helter-skelter after hoppers was as exciting as a stag hunt to the
+pack, as full of surprises as the wild chase through the soft snow after
+a litter of lynx kittens. And though they knew it not, they were
+learning things every hour of the sunny, playful afternoons that they
+would remember and find useful all the days of their life.
+
+So the funny little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a
+bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and
+inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed
+them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before
+chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting
+grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ever afterward. Even after they knew
+just where the grasshopper was hiding, watching them after a jump, and
+leaped upon him swiftly from a distance, he often got away when they
+lifted their paws to eat him. For the grasshopper was not dead under the
+light paw, as they supposed, but only pressed into the moss waiting for
+his chance to jump. Then the cubs learned another lesson: to hold their
+game down with both paws pressed closely together, inserting their noses
+like a wedge and keeping every crack of escape shut tight until they had
+the slippery morsel safe under their back teeth. And even then it was
+deliciously funny to watch their expression as they chewed, opening
+their jaws wide as if swallowing a rabbit, snapping them shut again as
+the grasshopper wiggled; and always with a doubt in their close-set
+eyes, a questioning twist of head and ears, as if they were not quite
+sure whether or not they were really eating him.
+
+Another suggestive thing came out in these hunts, which you must notice
+whether you watch wolves or coyotes or a den of fox cubs. Though no
+sound came from the watchful old mother, the cubs seemed at every
+instant under absolute control. One would rush away pell-mell after a
+hopper, miss him and tumble away again, till he was some distance from
+the busy group on the edge of the big lonely barren. In the midst of his
+chase the mother would raise her head and watch the cub intently. No
+sound was uttered that human ears could hear; but the chase ended right
+there, on the instant, and the cub came trotting back like a well-broken
+setter at the whistle. It was marvelous beyond comprehension, this
+absolute authority and this silent command that brought a wolf back
+instantly from the wildest chase, and that kept the cubs all together
+under the watchful eyes that followed every movement. No wonder wolves
+are intelligent in avoiding every trap and in hunting together to outwit
+some fleet-footed quarry with unbelievable cunning. Here on the edge of
+the vast, untrodden barren, far from human eyes, in an ordinary family
+of wolf cubs playing wild and free, eager, headstrong, hungry, yet
+always under control and instantly subject to a wiser head and a
+stronger will than their own, was the explanation of it all. Later, in
+the bitter, hungry winter, when a big caribou was afoot and the pack hot
+on his trail, the cubs would remember the lesson, and every free wolf
+would curb his hunger, obeying the silent signal to ease the game and
+follow slowly while the leader raced unseen through the woods to head
+the game and lie in ambush by the distant runway.
+
+From grasshoppers the cubs took to hunting the wood-mice that nested in
+the dry moss and swarmed on the edges of every thicket. This was keener
+hunting; for the wood-mouse moves like a ray of light, and always makes
+at least one false start to mislead any that may be watching for him.
+The cubs soon learned that when Tookhees appeared and dodged back again,
+as if frightened, it was not because he had seen them, but just because
+he always appears that way. So they crouched and hid, like a cat, and
+when a gray streak shot over the gray moss and vanished in a tuft of
+grass they leaped for the spot--and always found it vacant. For Tookhees
+always doubles on his trail, or burrows for a distance under the moss,
+and never hides where he disappears. It took the cubs a long while to
+find that out; and then they would creep and watch and listen till they
+could locate the game by a stir under the moss, and pounce upon it and
+nose it out from between their paws, just as they had done with the
+grasshoppers. And when they crunched it at last like a ripe plum under
+their teeth it was a delicious tidbit, worth all the trouble they had
+taken to get it. For your wolf, unlike the ferocious, grandmother-eating
+creature of the nursery, is at heart a peaceable fellow, most at home
+and most happy when mouse hunting.
+
+There was another kind of this mouse chasing which furnished better
+sport and more juicy mouthfuls to the young cubs. Here and there on the
+Newfoundland mountains the snow lingers all summer long. In every
+northern hollow of the hills you see, from a distance, white patches no
+bigger than your hat sparkling in the sun; but when you climb there,
+after bear or caribou, you find great snow-fields, acres in extent and
+from ten to a hundred feet deep, packed close and hard with the pressure
+of a thousand winters. Often when it rains in the valleys, and raises
+the salmon rivers to meet your expectations, a thin covering of new snow
+covers these white fields; and then, if you go there, you will find the
+new page written all over with the feet of birds and beasts. The mice
+especially love these snow-fields for some unknown reason. All along the
+edges you find the delicate, lacelike tracery which shows where little
+feet have gone on busy errands or played together in the moonlight; and
+if you watch there awhile you will surely see Tookhees come out of the
+moss and scamper across a bit of snow and dive back to cover under the
+moss again, as if he enjoyed the feeling of the cold snow under his feet
+in the summer sunshine. He has tunnels there, too, going down to solid
+ice, where he hides things to keep which would spoil if left in the heat
+of his den under the mossy stone, and when food is scarce he draws upon
+these cold-storage rooms; but most of his summer snow journeys, if one
+may judge from watching him and from following his tracks, are taken for
+play or comfort, just as the bull caribou comes up to lie in the snow,
+with the strong sea wind in his face, to escape the flies which swarm in
+the thickets below. Owl and hawk, fox and weasel and wildcat,--all the
+prowlers of the day and night have long since discovered these good
+hunting-grounds and leave the prints of wing and claw over the records
+of the wood-mice; but still Tookhees returns, led by his love of the
+snow-fields, and thrives and multiplies spite of all his enemies.
+
+One moonlit night the old wolf took her cubs to the edge of one of these
+snow-fields, where the eager eyes soon noticed dark streaks shooting
+hither and yon over the bare white surface. At first they chased them
+wildly; but one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, which has not so
+many places to hide as a wood-mouse. Then, remembering the grasshoppers,
+they crouched and crept and so caught a few. Meanwhile old mother wolf
+lay still in hiding, contenting herself with snapping up the game that
+came to her, instead of chasing it wildly all over the snow-field. The
+example was not lost; for imitation is strong among intelligent animals,
+and most of what they learn is due simply to following the mother. Soon
+the cubs were still, one lying here under shadow of a bush, another
+there by a gray rock that lifted its head out of the snow. As a dark
+streak moved nervously by one of these hiding-places there would be a
+rush, a snap, the _pchap pchap_ of jaws crunching a delicious morsel;
+then all quiet again, with only gray, innocent-looking shadows resting
+softly on the snow. So they moved gradually along the edges of the great
+white field; and next morning the tracks were all there, plain as
+daylight, telling their silent story of good hunting.
+
+To vary their diet the mother now took them down to the shore to hunt
+among the rocks for ducks' eggs. They were there by the hundreds,
+scattered along the lonely bays just above high-water line, where the
+eiders had their nests.
+
+At first old mother wolf showed them where to look, and when she had
+found a clutch of eggs would divide them fairly, keeping the hungry cubs
+in order at a little distance and bringing each one his share, which he
+ate without interference. Then when they understood the thing they
+scattered nimbly to hunt for themselves, and the real fun began.
+
+Now a cub, poking his nose industriously into every cranny and under
+every thick bush, would find a great roll of down plucked from the
+mother bird's breast, and scraping the top off carefully with his paw,
+would find five or six large pale-green eggs, which he gobbled down,
+shells, ducklings and all, before another cub should smell the good find
+and caper up to share it. Again he would be startled out of his wits as
+a large brown bird whirred and fluttered away from under his very nose.
+Sitting on his tail he would watch her with comical regret and longing
+till she tumbled into the tide and drifted swiftly away out of danger;
+then, remembering what he came for, he would turn and follow her trail
+back to the nest out of which she had stolen at his approach, and find
+the eggs all warm for his breakfast. And when he had eaten all he wanted
+he would take an egg in his mouth and run about uneasily here and there,
+like a dog with a bone when he thinks he is watched, till he had made a
+sad crisscross of his trail and found a spot where none could see him.
+There he would dig a hole and bury his egg and go back for more; and on
+his way would meet another cub running about with an egg in his mouth,
+looking for a spot where no one would notice him.
+
+From mice and eggs the young cubs turned to rabbits and hares; and these
+were their staple food ever afterward when other game was scarce and the
+wood-mice were hidden deep under the winter snows, safe at last for a
+little season from all their enemies. Here for the first time the father
+wolf appeared, coming in quietly one late afternoon, as if he knew, as
+he probably did, just when he was needed. Beyond a glance he paid no
+attention whatever to the cubs, only taking his place opposite the
+mother as the wolves started abreast in a long line to beat the thicket.
+
+By night the cubs had already caught several rabbits, snapping them up
+as they played heedlessly in the moonlight, just as they had done with
+the wood-mice. By day, however, the hunting was entirely different. Then
+the hares and rabbits are resting in their hidden forms under the ferns,
+or in a hollow between the roots of a brown stump. 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. If a cub succeeded, and snapped up a
+rabbit before the surprised creature had time to gather headway, he
+dropped behind with his catch, while the rest went slowly, carefully, on
+through the cover. If he failed, as was generally the case at first, a
+curious bit of wolf intelligence and wolf training came out at once.
+
+As the wolves advanced the father and mother would steal gradually ahead
+at either end of the line, rarely hunting themselves, but drawing the
+nearest cub's attention to any game they had discovered, and then moving
+silently to one side and a little ahead to watch the result. When the
+cub rushed and missed, and the startled rabbit went flying away,
+whirling to left or right as rabbits always do, there would be a
+lightning change at the end of the line. A terrific rush, a snap of the
+long jaws like a steel trap,--then the old wolf would toss back the
+rabbit with a broken back, for the cub to finish him. Not till the cubs
+first, and then the mother, had satisfied their hunger would the old
+he-wolf hunt for himself. Then he would disappear, and they would not
+see him for days at a time, until food was scarce and they needed him
+once more.
+
+One day, when the cubs were hungry and food scarce because of their
+persistent hunting near the den, the mother brought them to the edge of
+a dense thicket where rabbits were plentiful enough, but where the cover
+was so thick that they could not follow the frightened game for an
+instant. The old he-wolf had appeared at a distance and then vanished;
+and the cubs, trotting along behind the mother, knew nothing of what was
+coming or what was expected of them. They lay in hiding on the lee side
+of the thicket, each one crouching under a bush or root, with the mother
+off at one side perfectly hidden as usual.
+
+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. The cubs were filled with wonder. Such hunting was
+never seen before; for rabbits stirred abroad by day, and ran right into
+the hungry mouths instead of running away. Then, slinking along like a
+shadow and stopping to look back and sniff the wind, appeared a big red
+fox that had been sleeping away the afternoon on top of a stump in the
+center of the thicket.
+
+The old mother's eyes began to blaze as Eleemos drew near. There was a
+rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow
+as the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the
+fox turned to leap away. Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a
+flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had
+happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at
+his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling
+deep in their chests as the lust of their first fighting swept over
+them. Then in vague, vanishing glimpses the old he-wolf appeared,
+quartering swiftly, silently, back and forth through the thicket,
+driving every living thing down-wind to where the cubs and the mother
+were waiting to receive it.
+
+[Illustration: "As the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the
+back"]
+
+That one lesson was enough for the cubs, though years would pass before
+they could learn all the fine points of this beating the bush: to know
+almost at a glance where the game, whether grouse or hare or fox or
+lucivee, was hiding in the cover, and then for one wolf to drive it,
+slowly or swiftly as the case might require, while the other hid beside
+the most likely path of escape. A family of grouse must be coaxed along
+and never see what is driving them, else they will flit into a tree and
+be lost; while a cat must be startled out of her wits by a swift rush,
+and sent flying away before she can make up her stupid mind what the row
+is all about. A fox, almost as cunning as Wayeeses himself, must be made
+to think that some dog enemy is slowly puzzling out his cold trail;
+while a musquash searching for bake-apples, or a beaver going inland to
+cut wood for his winter supplies of bark, must not be driven, but be
+followed up swiftly by the path or canal by which he has ventured away
+from the friendly water.
+
+All these and many more things must be learned slowly at the expense of
+many failures, especially when the cubs took to hunting alone and the
+old wolves were not there to show them how; but they never forgot the
+principle taught in that first rabbit drive,--that two hunters are
+better than one to outwit any game when they hunt intelligently
+together. That is why you so often find wolves going in pairs; and when
+you study them or follow their tracks you discover that they play
+continually into each other's hands. They seem to share the spoil as
+intelligently as they catch it, the wolf that lies beside the runway and
+pulls down the game giving up a portion gladly to the companion that
+beats the bush, and rarely indeed is there any trace of quarreling
+between them.
+
+Like the eagles--which have long since learned the advantage of hunting
+in pairs and of scouting for game in single file--the wolves, when
+hunting deer on the open barrens where it is difficult to conceal their
+advance, always travel in files, one following close behind the other;
+so that, seen from in front where the game is watching, two or three
+wolves will appear like a lone animal trotting across the plain. That
+alarms the game far less at first; and not until the deer starts away
+does the second wolf appear, shooting out from behind the leader. The
+sight of another wolf appearing suddenly on his flank throws a young
+deer into a panic, in which he is apt to lose his head and be caught by
+the cunning hunters.
+
+Curiously enough, the plains Indians, who travel in the same way when
+hunting or scouting for enemies, first learned the trick--so an old
+chief told me, and it is one of the traditions of his people--from
+watching the timber wolves in their stealthy advance over the open
+places.
+
+The wolves were stealing through the woods all together, one late summer
+afternoon, having beaten a cover without taking anything, when the
+puzzled cubs suddenly found themselves alone. A moment before they had
+been trotting along with the old wolves, nosing every cranny and knot
+hole for mice and grubs, and stopping often for a roll and frolic, as
+young cubs do in the gladness of life; now they pressed close together,
+looking, listening, while a subtle excitement filled all the woods. For
+the old wolves had disappeared, shooting ahead in great, silent bounds,
+while the cubs waited with ears cocked and noses quivering, as if a
+silent command had been understood.
+
+The silence was intense; not a sound, not a stir in the quiet woods,
+which seemed to be listening with the cubs and to be filled with the
+same thrilling expectation. Suddenly the silence was broken by heavy
+plunges far ahead, _crash! bump! bump!_ and there broke forth such an
+uproar of yaps and howls as the cubs had never heard before. Instantly
+they broke away on the trail, joining their shrill yelpings to the
+clamor, so different from the ordinary stealthy wolf hunt, and filled
+with a nameless excitement which they did not at all understand till the
+reek of caribou poured into their hungry nostrils; whereupon they yelped
+louder than ever. But they did not begin to understand the matter till
+they caught glimpses of gray backs bounding hither and yon in the
+underbrush, while the two great wolves raced easily on either side,
+yapping sharply to increase the excitement, and guiding the startled,
+foolish deer as surely, as intelligently, as a pair of collies herd a
+flock of frightened sheep.
+
+When the cubs broke out of the dense cover at last they found the two
+old wolves sitting quietly on their tails before a rugged wall of rocks
+that stretched away on either hand at the base of a great bare hill. In
+front of them was a young cow caribou, threatening savagely with horns
+and hoofs, while behind her cowered two half-grown fawns crowded into a
+crevice of the rocks. Anger, rather than fear, blazed out in the
+mother's mild eyes. Now she turned swiftly to press her excited young
+ones back against the sheltering wall; now she whirled with a savage
+grunt and charged headlong at the wolves, which merely leaped aside and
+sat down silently again to watch the game, till the cubs raced out and
+hovered uneasily about with a thousand questions in every eye and ear
+and twitching nostril.
+
+The reason for the hunt was now plain enough. Up to this time the
+caribou had been let severely alone, though they were very numerous,
+scattered through the dense coverts in every valley and on every
+hillside. For Wayeeses is no wanton killer, as he is so often
+represented to be, but sticks to small game whenever he can find it, and
+leaves the deer unmolested. As for his motive in the matter, who shall
+say, since no one understands the half of what a wolf does every day?
+Perhaps it is a mere matter of taste, a preference for the smaller and
+more juicy tidbits; more likely it is a combination of instinct and
+judgment, with a possible outlook for the future unusual with beasts of
+prey. The moment the young wolves take to harrying the deer--as they
+invariably do if the mother wolf be not with them--the caribou leave the
+country. The herds become, moreover, so wild and suspicious after a very
+little wolf hunting that they are exceedingly difficult of approach; and
+there is no living thing on earth, not even a white wolf or a trained
+greyhound, that can tire or overtake a startled caribou. The swinging
+rack of these big white wanderers looks easy enough when you see it; but
+when the fleet staghounds are slipped, as has been more than once tested
+in Newfoundland, try as hard as they will they cannot keep within sight
+of the deer for a single quarter-mile, and no limit has ever yet been
+found, either by dog or wolf, to Megaleep's tirelessness. So the old
+wolves, relying possibly upon past experience, keep the cubs and hold
+themselves strictly to small game as long as it can possibly be found.
+Then when the bitter days of late winter come, with their scarcity of
+small game and their unbearable hunger, the wolves turn to the caribou
+as a last resort, killing a few here by stealth, rather than speed, and
+then, when the game grows wild, going far off to another range where the
+deer have not been disturbed and so can be approached more easily.
+
+On this afternoon, however, the old mother wolf had run plump upon the
+caribou and her fawns in the midst of a thicket, and had leaped forward
+promptly to round them up for her hungry cubs. It would have been the
+easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring one of the slow
+fawns, or the mother caribou herself as she hovered in the rear to
+defend her young; but there were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head
+that had seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the deer slowly,
+puzzling them more and more, as a collie distracts the herd by his
+yapping, out into the open where her cubs might join in the hunting.
+
+The wolves now drew back, all save the mother, which advanced
+hesitatingly to where the caribou stood with lowered head, watching
+every move. Suddenly the cow charged, so swiftly, furiously, that the
+old wolf seemed almost caught, and tumbled away with the broad hoofs
+striking savagely at her flanks. Farther and farther the caribou drove
+her enemy, roused now to frenzy at the wolf's nearness and apparent
+cowardice. Then she whirled in a panic and rushed back to her little
+ones, only to find that all the other wolves, as if frightened by her
+furious charge, had drawn farther back from the cranny in the rocks.
+
+Again the old she-wolf approached cautiously, and again the caribou
+plunged at her and followed her lame retreat with headlong fury. An
+electric shock seemed suddenly to touch the huge he-wolf. Like a flash
+he leaped in on the fawns. One quick snap of the long jaws with the
+terrible fangs; then, as if the whole thing were a bit of play, he loped
+away easily with the cubs, circling to join the mother wolf, which
+strangely enough did not return to the attack as the caribou charged
+back, driving the cubs and the old he-wolf away like a flock of sheep.
+The coast was now clear, not an enemy in the way; and the mother
+caribou, with a triumphant bleat to her fawns to follow, plunged back
+into the woods whence she had come.
+
+One fawn only followed her. The other took a step or two, sank to his
+knees, and rolled over on his side. When the wolves drew near quietly,
+without a trace of the ferocity or the howling clamor with which such
+scenes are usually pictured, the game was quite dead, one quick snap of
+the old wolf's teeth just behind the fore legs having pierced the heart
+more surely than a hunter's bullet. And the mother caribou, plunging
+wildly away through the brush with the startled fawn jumping at her
+heels, could not know that her mad flight was needless; that the
+terrible enemy which had spared her and let her go free had no need nor
+desire to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fat autumn had now come with its abundant fare, and the caribou were
+not again molested. Flocks of grouse and ptarmigan came out of the thick
+coverts, in which they had been hiding all summer, and began to pluck
+the berries of the open plains, where they could easily be waylaid and
+caught by the growing wolf cubs. Plover came in hordes, sweeping over
+the Straits from the Labrador; and when the wolves surrounded a flock of
+the queer birds and hitched nearer and nearer, sinking their gray bodies
+in the yielding gray moss till they looked like weather-worn logs, the
+hunting was full of tense excitement, though the juicy mouthfuls were
+few and far between. Fox cubs roamed abroad away from their mothers,
+self-willed and reveling in the abundance; and it was now easy for two
+of the young wolves to drive a fox out of his daytime cover and catch
+him as he stole away.
+
+After the plover came the ducks in myriads, filling the ponds and
+flashets of the vast barrens with tumultuous quacking; and the young
+wolves learned, like the foxes, to decoy the silly birds by rousing
+their curiosity. They would hide in the grass, while one played and
+rolled about on the open shore, till the ducks saw him and began to
+stretch their necks and gabble their amazement at the strange thing,
+which they had never seen before. Shy and wild as he naturally is, a
+duck, like a caribou or a turkey, must take a peek at every new thing.
+Now silent, now gabbling all together, the flock would veer and scatter
+and draw together again, and finally swing in toward the shore, every
+neck drawn straight as a string the better to see what was going on.
+Nearer and nearer they would come, till a swift rush out of the grass
+sent them off headlong, splashing and quacking with crazy clamor. But
+one or two always stayed behind with the wolves to pay the price of
+curiosity.
+
+Then there were the young geese, which gathered in immense flocks in the
+shallow bays, preparing and drilling for the autumn flight. Late in the
+afternoon the old mother wolf with her cubs would steal down through the
+woods, hiding and watching the flocks, and following them stealthily as
+they moved along the shore. At night the great flock would approach a
+sandbar, well out of the way of rocks and brush and everything that
+might hide an enemy, and go to sleep in close little family groups on
+the open shore. As the night darkened four shadows would lengthen out
+from the nearest bank of shadows, creeping onward to the sand-bar with
+the slow patience of the hours. A rush, a startled _honk!_ a terrific
+clamor of wings and throats and smitten water. Then the four shadows
+would rise up from the sand and trot back to the woods, each with a
+burden on its shoulders and a sparkle in the close-set eyes over the
+pointed jaws, which were closed on the neck of a goose, holding it tight
+lest any outcry escape to tell the startled flock what had happened.
+
+Besides this abundant game there were other good things to eat, and the
+cubs rarely dined of the same dish twice in succession. Salmon and big
+sea-trout swarmed now in every shallow of the clear brooks, and, after
+spawning, these fish were much weakened and could easily be caught by a
+little cunning. Every day and night the tide ebbed and flowed, and every
+tide left its contribution in windrows of dead herring and caplin, with
+scattered crabs and mussels for a relish, like plums in a pudding. A
+wolf had only to trot for a mile or two along the tide line of a lonely
+beach, picking up the good things which the sea had brought him, and
+then go back to sleep or play satisfied. And if Wayeeses wanted game to
+try his mettle and cunning, there were the big fat seals barking on the
+black rocks, and he had only to cut between them and the sea and throw
+himself upon the largest seal as the herd floundered ponderously back to
+safety. A wolf rarely grips and holds an enemy; he snaps and lets go,
+and snaps again at every swift chance; but here he must either hold fast
+or lose his big game; and what between holding and letting go, as the
+seals whirled with bared teeth and snapped viciously in turn, as they
+scrambled away to the sea, the wolves had a lively time of it. Often
+indeed, spite of three or four wolves, a big seal would tumble into the
+tide, where the sharks followed his bloody trail and soon finished him.
+
+Now for the first time the wolves, led by the rich abundance, began to
+kill more than they needed for food and to hide it away, like the
+squirrels, in anticipation of the coming winter. Like the blue and the
+Arctic foxes, a strange instinct to store things seems to stir dimly at
+times within them. Occasionally, instead of eating and sleeping after a
+kill, the cubs, led by the mother wolf, would hunt half of the day and
+night and carry all they caught to the snow-fields. There each one would
+search out a cranny in the rocks and hide his game, covering it over
+deeply with snow to kill the scent of it from the prowling foxes. Then
+for days at a time they would forget the coming winter, and play as
+heedlessly as if the woods would always be as full of game as now; and
+again the mood would be upon them strongly, and they would kill all they
+could find and hide it in another place. But the instinct--if indeed it
+were instinct, and not the natural result of the mother's own
+experience--was weak at best; and the first time the cubs were hungry or
+lazy they would trail off to the hidden store. Long before the spring
+with its bitter need was upon them they had eaten everything, and had
+returned to the empty storehouse at least a dozen times, as a dog goes
+again and again to the place where he once hid a bone, and nosed it all
+over regretfully to be quite sure that they had overlooked nothing.
+
+More interesting to the wolves in these glad days than the game or the
+storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on
+the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,--splendid old stags with
+massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the
+sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far
+than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they
+crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets,
+sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, endless lines
+converging upon the vast open barrens where the caribou gathered to
+select their mates for another year. Where they all came from was a
+mystery that filled the cubs' heads with constant wonder. During the
+summer you see little of them,--here a cow with her fawn hiding deep in
+the cover, there a big stag standing out like a watchman on the mountain
+top; but when the early autumn comes they are everywhere, crossing
+rivers and lakes at regular points, and following deep paths which their
+ancestors have followed for countless generations.
+
+The cows and fawns seemed gentle and harmless enough, though their very
+numbers filled the young wolves with a certain awe. After their first
+lesson it would have been easy enough for the cubs to have killed all
+they wanted and to grow fat and lazy as the bears, which were now
+stuffing themselves before going off to sleep for the winter; but the
+old mother wolf held them firmly in check, for with plenty of small game
+everywhere, all wolves are minded to go quietly about their own business
+and let the caribou follow their own ways. When October came it brought
+the big stags into the open,--splendid, imposing beasts, with swollen
+necks and fierce red eyes and long white manes tossing in the wind. Then
+the wolves had to stand aside; for the stags roamed over all the land,
+pawing the moss in fury, bellowing their hoarse challenge, and charging
+like a whirlwind upon every living thing that crossed their paths.
+
+When the mother wolf, with her cubs at heel, saw one of these big furies
+at a distance she would circle prudently to avoid him. Again, as the
+cubs hunted rabbits, they would hear a crash of brush and a furious
+challenge as some quarrelsome stag winded them; and the mother with her
+cubs gathered close about her would watch alertly for his headlong rush.
+As he charged out the wolves would scatter and leap nimbly aside, then
+sit down on their tails in a solemn circle and watch as if studying the
+strange beast. Again and again he would rush upon them, only to find
+that he was fighting the wind. Mad as a hornet, he would single out a
+cub and follow him headlong through brush and brake till some subtle
+warning thrilled through his madness, telling him to heed his flank;
+then as he whirled he would find the savage old mother close at his
+heels, her white fangs bared and a dangerous flash in her eyes as she
+saw the hamstring so near, so easy to reach. One spring and a snap, and
+the ramping, masterful stag would have been helpless as a rabbit, his
+tendons cut cleanly at the hock; another snap and he must come down,
+spite of his great power, and be food for the growing cubs that sat on
+their tails watching him, unterrified now by his fierce challenge. But
+Megaleep's time had not yet come; besides, he was too tough. So the
+wolves studied him awhile, amused perhaps at the rough play; then, as if
+at a silent command, they vanished like shadows into the nearest cover,
+leaving the big stag in his rage to think himself master of all the
+world.
+
+Sometimes as the old he-wolf ranged alone, a silent, powerful,
+noble-looking brute, he would meet the caribou, and there would be a
+fascinating bit of animal play. He rarely turned aside, knowing his own
+power, and the cows and fawns after one look would bound aside and rack
+away at a marvelous pace over the barrens. In a moment or two, finding
+that they were not molested, they would turn and watch the wolf
+curiously till he disappeared, trying perhaps to puzzle it out why the
+ferocious enemy of the deep snows and the bitter cold should now be
+harmless as the passing birds.
+
+Again a young bull with his keen, polished spike-horns, more active and
+dangerous but less confident than the over-antlered stags, would stand
+in the old wolf's path, disputing with lowered front the right of way.
+Here the right of way meant a good deal, for in many places on the high
+plains the scrub spruces grow so thickly that a man can easily walk over
+the tops of them on his snow-shoes, and the only possible passage in
+summer-time is by means of the numerous paths worn through the scrub by
+the passing of animals for untold ages. So one or the other of the two
+splendid brutes that now approached each other in the narrow way must
+turn aside or be beaten down underfoot.
+
+Quietly, steadily, the old wolf would come on till almost within
+springing distance, when he would stop and lift his great head,
+wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning
+deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he
+would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle
+nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take
+his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along
+the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; while the young bull
+would stand wondering, his body hidden in the scrub and his head thrust
+into the narrow path to look after his strange adversary.
+
+Another time, as the old wolf ranged along the edges of the barrens
+where the caribou herds were gathering, he would hear the challenge of a
+huge stag and the warning crack of twigs and the thunder of hoofs as the
+brute charged. Still the wolf trotted quietly along, watching from the
+corners of his eyes till the stag was upon him, when he sprang lightly
+aside and let the rush go harmlessly by. Sitting on his tail he would
+watch the caribou closely--and who could tell what was passing behind
+those cunning eyes that glowed steadily like coals, unruffled as yet by
+the passing winds, but ready at a rough breath to break out in flames of
+fire? Again and again the stag would charge, growing more furious at
+every failure; and every time the wolf leaped aside he left a terrible
+gash in his enemy's neck or side, punishing him cruelly for his bullying
+attack, yet strangely refusing to kill, as he might have done, or to
+close on the hamstring with one swift snap that would have put the big
+brute out of the fight forever. At last, knowing perhaps from past
+experience the uselessness of punishing or of disputing with this madman
+that felt no wounds in his rage, the wolf would lope away to cover,
+followed by a victorious bugle-cry that rang over the wide barren and
+echoed back from the mountain side. Then the wolf would circle back
+stealthily and put his nose down into the stag's hoof-marks for a long,
+deep sniff, and go quietly on his way again. A wolf's nose never
+forgets. When he finds that trail wandering with a score of others over
+the snow, in the bitter days to come when the pack are starving,
+Wayeeses will know whom he is following.
+
+Besides the caribou there were other things to rouse the cubs' curiosity
+and give them something pleasant to do besides eating and sleeping. When
+the hunter's moon rose full and clear over the woods, filling all
+animals with strange unrest, the pack would circle the great harbor,
+trotting silently along, nose to tail in single file, keeping on the
+high ridge of mountains and looking like a distant train of husky dogs
+against the moonlight. When over the fishing village they would sit
+down, each one on the loftiest rock he could find, raise their muzzles
+to the stars, and join in the long howl, _Ooooooo-wow-ow-ow!_ a
+terrible, wailing cry that seemed to drive every dog within hearing
+stark crazy. Out of the village lanes far below they rushed headlong,
+and sitting on the beach in a wide circle, heads all in and tails out,
+they raised their noses to the distant, wolf-topped pinnacles and joined
+in the wailing answer. Then the wolves would sit very still, listening
+with cocked ears to the cry of their captive kinsmen, till the dismal
+howling died away into silence, when they would start the clamor into
+life again by giving the wolf's challenge.
+
+Why they did it, what they felt there in the strange unreality of the
+moonlight, and what hushed their profound enmity, none can tell.
+Ordinarily the wolf hates both fox and dog, and kills them whenever they
+cross his path; but to-night the foxes were yapping an answer all around
+them, and sometimes a few adventurous dogs would scale the mountains
+silently to sit on the rocks and join in the wild wolf chorus, and not a
+wolf stirred to molest them. All were more or less lunatic, and knew not
+what they were doing.
+
+For hours the uncanny comedy would drag itself on into the tense
+midnight silence, the wailing cry growing more demented and heartrending
+as the spell of ancient days fell again upon the degenerate huskies. Up
+on the lonely mountain tops the moon looked down, still and cold, and
+saw upon every pinnacle a dog or a wolf, each with his head turned up at
+the sky, howling his heart out. Down in the hamlet, scattered for miles
+along Deep Arm and the harbor shore, sleepers stirred uneasily at the
+clamor, the women clutching their babies close, the men cursing the
+crazy brutes and vowing all sorts of vengeance on the morrow. Then the
+wolves would slip away like shadows into the vast upland barrens, and
+the dogs, restless as witches with some unknown excitement, would run
+back to whine and scratch at the doors of their masters' cabins.
+
+Soon the big snowflakes were whirling in the air, busily weaving a soft
+white winding-sheet for the autumn which was passing away. And truly it
+had been a good time for the wolf cubs, as for most wild animals; and
+they had grown large and strong with their fat feeding, and wise with
+their many experiences. The ducks and geese vanished, driving southward
+ahead of the fierce autumn gales, and only the late broods of hardy
+eiders were left for a little season. Herring and caplin had long since
+drifted away into unknown depths, where the tides flowed endlessly over
+them and brought never a one ashore. Hares and ptarmigans turned white
+to hide on the snow, so that wolf and fox would pass close by without
+seeing them. Wood-mice pushed their winding tunnels and made their
+vaulted play rooms deep under the drifts, where none might molest nor
+make them afraid; and all game grew wary and wild, learning from
+experience, as it always does, that only the keen can survive the fall
+hunting. So the long winter, with its snow and ice and its bitter cold
+and its grim threat of famine, settled heavily over Harbor Weal and the
+Long Range where Wayeeses must find his living.
+
+
+
+_The White Wolf's Hunting_
+
+Threatening as the northern winter was, with its stern order to the
+birds to depart, and to the beasts to put on their thick furs, and to
+the little folk of the snow to hide themselves in white coats, and to
+all living things to watch well the ways that they took, it could bring
+no terror to Wayeeses and her powerful young cubs. The gladness of life
+was upon them, with none of its pains or anxieties or fears, as we know
+them; and they rolled and tumbled about in the first deep snow with the
+abandon of young foxes, filled with wonder at the strange blanket that
+covered the rough places of earth so softly and made their light
+footsteps more noiseless than before. For to be noiseless and
+inconspicuous, and so in harmony with his surroundings, is the first
+desire of every creature of the vast solitudes.
+
+Meeting the wolves now, as they roamed wild and free over the great
+range, one would hardly have recognized the little brown creatures that
+he saw playing about the den where the trail began. The cubs were
+already noble-looking brutes, larger than the largest husky dog; and the
+parents were taller, with longer legs and more massive heads and
+powerful jaws, than any great timber-wolf. A tremendous vitality
+thrilled in them from nose to paw tips. Their great bodies, as they lay
+quiet in the snow with heads raised and hind legs bent under them, were
+like powerful engines, tranquil under enormous pressure; and when they
+rose the movement was like the quick snap of a steel spring. Indeed,
+half the ordinary movements of Wayeeses are so quick that the eye cannot
+follow them. One instant a wolf would be lying flat on his side, his
+long legs outstretched on the moss, his eyes closed in the sleepy
+sunshine, his body limp as a hound's after a fox chase; the next
+instant, like the click and blink of a camera shutter, he would be
+standing alert on all four feet, questioning the passing breeze or
+looking intently into your eyes; and you could not imagine, much less
+follow, the recoil of twenty big electric muscles that at some subtle
+warning had snapped him automatically from one position to the other.
+They were all snow-white, with long thick hair and a heavy mane that
+added enormously to their imposing appearance; and they carried their
+bushy tails almost straight out as they trotted along, with a slight
+crook near the body,--the true wolf sign that still reappears in many
+collies to tell a degenerate race of a noble ancestry.
+
+After the first deep snows the family separated, led by their growing
+hunger and by the difficulty of finding enough game in one cover to
+supply all their needs. The mother and the smallest cub remained
+together; the two larger cubs ranged on the other side of the mountain,
+beating the bush and hunting into each other's mouth, as they had been
+trained to do; while the big he-wolf hunted successfully by himself, as
+he had done for years. Scattered as they were, they still kept track of
+each other faithfully, and in a casual way looked after one another's
+needs. Wherever he was, a wolf seemed to know by instinct where his
+fellows were hunting many miles away. When in doubt he had only to mount
+the highest hill and give the rallying cry, which carried an enormous
+distance in the still cold air, to bring the pack swiftly and silently
+about him.
+
+At times, when the cubs were hungry after a two-days fast, they would
+hear, faint and far away, the food cry, _yap-yap-yooo! yap-yap-yoooooo!_
+quivering under the stars in the tense early-morning air, and would dart
+away to find game freshly killed by one of the old wolves awaiting them.
+Again, at nightfall, a cub's hunting cry, _ooooo, ow-ow! ooooo, ow-ow!_
+a deep, almost musical hoot with two short barks at the end, would come
+singing down from the uplands; and the wolves, leaving instantly the
+game they were following, would hasten up to find the two cubs herding a
+caribou in a cleft of the rocks,--a young caribou that had lost his
+mother at the hands of the hunters, and that did not know how to take
+care of himself. And one of the cubs would hold him there, sitting on
+his tail in front of the caribou to prevent his escape, while the other
+cub called the wolves away from their own hunting to come and join the
+feast.
+
+Whether this were a conscious attempt to spare the game, or to alarm it
+as little as need be, it is impossible to say. Certainly the wolves
+know, better apparently than men, that persistent hunting destroys its
+own object, and that caribou especially, when much alarmed by dogs or
+wolves or men, will take the alarm quickly, and the scattered herds,
+moved by a common impulse of danger, will trail far away to other
+ranges. That is why the wolf, unlike the less intelligent dog, hunts
+always in a silent, stealthy, unobtrusive way; and why he stops hunting
+and goes away the instant his own hunger is satisfied or another wolf
+kills enough for all. And that is also the probable reason why he lets
+the deer alone as long as he can find any other game.
+
+This same intelligent provision was shown in another curious way. When a
+wolf in his wide ranging found a good hunting-ground where small game
+was plentiful, he would snap up a rabbit silently in the twilight and
+then go far away, perhaps to join the other cubs in a gambol, or to
+follow them to the cliffs over a fishing village and set all the dogs to
+howling. By day he would lie close in some thick cover, miles away from
+his hunting-ground. At twilight he would steal back and hunt quietly,
+just long enough to get his game, and then trot away again, leaving the
+cover as unharried as if there were not a wolf in the whole
+neighborhood.
+
+Such a good hunting-ground cannot long remain hidden from other prowlers
+in the wilderness; and Wayeeses, who was keeping his discovery to
+himself, would soon cross the trail of a certain old fox returning day
+after day to the same good covers. No two foxes, nor mice, nor men, nor
+any other two animals for that matter, ever leave the same scent,--any
+old hound, which will hold steadily to one fox though a dozen others
+cross or cover his trail, will show you that plainly in a day's
+hunting,--and the wolf would soon know surely that the same fox was
+poaching every night on his own preserves while he was away. To a
+casual, wandering hunter he paid no attention; but this cunning poacher
+must be laid by the heels, else there would not be a single rabbit left
+in the cover. So Wayeeses, instead of hunting himself at twilight when
+the rabbits are stirring, would wait till midday, when the sun is warm
+and foxes are sleepy, and then come back to find the poacher's trail and
+follow it to where Eleemos was resting for the day in a sunny opening in
+the scrub. There Wayeeses would steal upon him from behind and put an
+end to his poaching; or else, if the fox used the same nest daily, as is
+often the case when he is not disturbed, the wolf would circle the scrub
+warily to find the path by which Eleemos usually came out on his night's
+hunting. When he found that out Wayeeses would dart away in the long,
+rolling gallop that carries a wolf swiftly over the roughest country
+without fatigue. In an hour or two he would be back again with another
+wolf. Then Eleemos, dozing away in the winter sunshine, would hear an
+unusual racket in the scrub behind him,--some heavy animal brushing
+about heedlessly and sniffing loudly at a cold trail. No wolf certainly,
+for a wolf makes no noise. So Eleemos would get down from his warm rock
+and slip away, stopping to look back and listen jauntily to the clumsy
+brute behind him, till he ran plump into the jaws of the other wolf that
+was watching alert and silent beside the runway.
+
+When the snows were deep and soft the wolves took to hunting the
+lynxes,--big, savage, long-clawed fighters that swarm in the interior of
+Newfoundland and play havoc with the small game. For a single lynx the
+wolves hunted in pairs, trailing the big prowler stealthily and rushing
+upon him from behind with a fierce uproar to startle the wits out of his
+stupid head and send him off headlong, as cats go, before he knew what
+was after him. Away he would go in mighty jumps, sinking shoulder deep,
+often indeed up to his tufted ears, at every plunge. After him raced the
+wolves, running lightly and taking advantage of the holes he had made in
+the soft snow, till a swift snap in his flank brought Upweekis up with a
+ferocious snarl to tear in pieces his pursuers.
+
+Then began as savage a bit of fighting as the woods ever witness, teeth
+against talons, wolf cunning against cat ferocity. Crouched in the snow,
+spitting and snarling, his teeth bared and round eyes blazing and long
+claws aching to close in a death grip, Upweekis waited impatient as a
+fury for the rush. He is an ugly fighter; but he must always get close,
+gripping his enemy with teeth and fore claws while the hind claws get in
+their deadly work, kicking downward in powerful spasmodic blows and
+ripping everything before them. A dog would rush in now and be torn to
+pieces; but not so the wolves. Dancing lightly about the big lynx they
+would watch their chance to leap and snap, sometimes avoiding the blow
+of the swift paw with its terrible claws, and sometimes catching it on
+their heavy manes; but always a long red mark showed on the lynx's
+silver fur as the wolves' teeth clicked with the voice of a steel trap
+and they leaped aside without serious injury. As the big cat grew blind
+in his fury they would seize their chance like a flash and leap
+together; one pair of long jaws would close hard on the spine behind the
+tufted ears; another pair would grip a hind leg, while the wolves sprang
+apart and braced to hold. Then the fight was all over; and the moose
+birds, in pairs, came flitting in silently to see if there were not a
+few unconsidered trifles of the feast for them to dispose of.
+
+Occasionally, at nightfall, the wolves' hunting cry would ring out of
+the woods as one of the cubs discovered three or four of the lynxes
+growling horribly over some game they had pulled down together. 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. No young wolf would ever run into one of these bands
+alone; but when the pack rolled in upon them like a tempest the lynxes
+would leap squalling away in a blind rush; and the two big wolves,
+cutting in from the ends of the charging line, would turn a lynx kit
+deftly aside for the cubs to hold. Then another for themselves, and the
+hunt was over,--all but the feast at the end of it.
+
+When a big and cunning lynx took to a tree at the first alarm the wolves
+would go aside to leeward, where Upweekis could not see them, but where
+their noses told them perfectly all that he was doing. Then began the
+long game of patience, the wolves waiting for the game to come down, and
+the lynx waiting for the wolves to go away. Upweekis was at a
+disadvantage, for he could not see when he had won; and he generally
+came down in an hour or two, only to find the wolves hot on his trail
+before he had taken a dozen jumps. Whereupon he took to another tree and
+the game began again.
+
+[Illustration: "The silent, appalling death-watch began."]
+
+When the night was exceeding cold--and one who has not felt it can
+hardly imagine the bitter, killing intensity of a northern midnight in
+February--the wolves, instead of going away, would wait under the tree
+in which the lynx had taken refuge, and the silent, appalling
+death-watch began. A lynx, though heavily furred, cannot long remain
+exposed in the intense cold without moving. Moreover he must grip the
+branch on which he sits more or less firmly with his claws, to keep from
+falling; and the tense muscles, which flex the long claws to drive them
+into the wood, soon grow weary and numb in the bitter frost. The wolves
+meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot
+slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to
+keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on
+any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves' jaws; or else,
+knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest wolf and dies fighting.
+
+Spite of the killing cold, the problem of keeping warm was to the wolves
+always a simple one. Moving along through the winter night, always on a
+swift, silent trot, they picked up what game came in their way, and
+scarcely felt the eager cold that nipped at their ears, or the wind,
+keen as an icicle, that strove to penetrate the shaggy white coats that
+covered them. When their hunger was satisfied, or when the late day came
+and found them still hunting hopefully, they would push their way into
+the thick scrub from one of the numerous paths and lie down on a nest of
+leaves, which even in midwinter were dry as if no snow or rain had ever
+fallen. There, where no wind or gale however strong could penetrate, and
+with the snow filling the low branches overhead and piled over them in a
+soft, warm blanket three feet thick, they would push their sensitive
+noses into their own thick fur to keep them warm, and sleep comfortably
+till the early twilight came and called them out again to the hunting.
+
+At times, when not near the scrub, they would burrow deep into a great
+drift of snow and sleep in the warmest kind of a nest,--a trick that the
+husky dogs, which are but wolves of yesterday, still remember. Like all
+wild animals, they felt the coming of a storm long before the first
+white flakes began to whirl in the air; and when a great storm
+threatened they would lie down to sleep in a cave, or a cranny of the
+rocks, and let the drifts pile soft and warm over them. However long the
+storm, they never stirred abroad; partly for their own comfort, partly
+because all game lies hid at such times and it is practically
+impossible, even for a wolf, to find it. When a wolf has fed full he can
+go a week without eating and suffer no great discomfort. So Wayeeses
+would lie close and warm while the snow piled deep around him and the
+gale raged over the sea and mountains, but passed unfelt and unheeded
+over his head. Then, when the storm was over, he pawed his way up
+through the drift and came out in a new, bright world, where the game,
+with appetites sharpened by the long fast, was already stirring briskly
+in every covert.
+
+When March came, the bitterest month of all for the Wood Folk, even
+Wayeeses was often hard pressed to find a living. Small game grew scarce
+and very wild; the caribou had wandered far away to other ranges; and
+the cubs would dig for hours after a mouse, or stalk a snowbird, or wait
+with endless patience for a red squirrel to stop his chatter and come
+down to search under the snow for a fir cone that he had hidden there in
+the good autumn days. And once, when the hunger within was more nipping
+than the eager cold without, one of the cubs found a bear sleeping in
+his winter den among the rocks. With a sharp hunting cry, that sang like
+a bullet over the frozen wastes, he called the whole pack about him.
+While the rest lay in hiding the old he-wolf approached warily and
+scratched Mooween out of his den, and then ran away to entice the big
+brute into the open ground, where the pack rolled in upon him and killed
+him in a terrible fight before he had fairly shaken the sleep out of his
+eyes.
+
+Old Tomah, the trapper, was abroad now, taking advantage of the spring
+hunger. The wolves often crossed his snow-shoe trail, or followed it
+swiftly to see whither it led. For a wolf, like a farm dog, is never
+satisfied till he knows the ways of every living thing that crosses his
+range. Following the broad trail Wayeeses would find here a trapped
+animal, struggling desperately with the clog and the cruel gripping
+teeth, there the flayed carcass of a lynx or an otter, and yonder the
+leg of a dog or a piece of caribou meat hung by a cord over a runway,
+with the snow disturbed beneath it where the deadly trap was hidden. One
+glance, or a sniff at a distance, was enough for the wolf. Lynxes do not
+go about the range without their skins, and meat does not naturally hang
+on trees; so Wayeeses, knowing all the ways of the woods, would ignore
+these baits absolutely. Nevertheless he followed the snow-shoe trails
+until he knew where every unnatural thing lay hidden; and no matter how
+hungry he was, or how cunningly the old Indian hid his devices, or
+however deep the new snow covered all traces of man's work, Wayeeses
+passed by on the other side and kept his dainty feet out of every snare
+and pitfall.
+
+Once, when the two cubs that hunted together were hard pinched with
+hunger, they found Old Tomah in the twilight and followed him
+stealthily. The old Indian was swinging along, silent as a shadow of the
+woods, his gun on his shoulder and some skins on his back, heading
+swiftly for the little hut under the cliff, where he burrowed for the
+night as snug as a bear in his den. An old wolf would have known
+instantly the danger, for man alone bites at a distance; but the
+lop-eared cub, which was larger than his brother and therefore the
+leader, raised his head for the hunting cry. The first yap had hardly
+left his throat when the thunder roared, and something seared the wolf's
+side like a hot iron. The cubs vanished like the smoke from the old gun.
+Then the Indian came swiftly back on the trail, peering about with hawk
+eyes to see the effect of his shot.
+
+"By cosh! miss um dat time. Mus' be powder no good." Then, as he read
+the plain record in the snow, "One,--by cosh! two hwulf, lil fool hwulf,
+follow my footin'. Mus' be more, come soon pretty quick now; else he
+don' howl dat way. Guess mebbe ol' Injun better stay in house nights."
+And he trailed warily back to hide himself behind a rock and watch till
+dark in front of his little _commoosie_.
+
+Old Tomah's sleep was sound as usual that night; so he could not see the
+five shadows that stole out of the woods, nor hear the light footfalls
+that circled his camp, nor feel the breath, soft as an eddy of wind in a
+spruce top, that whiffed at the crack under his door and drifted away
+again. Next morning he saw the tracks and understood them; and as he
+trailed away through the still woods he was wondering, in his silent
+Indian way, why an old wolf should always bring Malsunsis, the cub, for
+a good look and a sniff at anything that he is to avoid ever after.
+
+When all else fails follow the caribou,--that is the law which governs
+the wolf in the hungry days; but before they crossed the mountains and
+followed the long valleys to the far southern ranges the wolves went
+back to the hills, where the trail began, for a more exciting and
+dangerous kind of hunting. The pack had held closer together of late;
+for the old wolves must often share even a scant fox or rabbit with the
+hungry and inexperienced youngsters. Now, when famine drove them to the
+very doors of the one enemy to be feared, only the wisest and wariest
+old wolf was fit to lead the foray.
+
+The little fishing village was buried under drifts and almost deserted.
+A few men lingered to watch the boats and houses; but the families had
+all gone inland to the winter tilts for wood and shelter. By night the
+wolves would come stealthily to prowl among the deserted lanes; and the
+fishermen, asleep in their clothes under caribou skins, or sitting close
+by the stove behind barred doors, would know nothing of the huge, gaunt
+forms that flitted noiselessly past the frosted windows. If a pig were
+left in his pen a sudden terrible squealing would break out on the still
+night; and when the fisherman rushed out the pen would be empty, with
+nothing whatever to account for piggie's disappearance. For to their
+untrained eyes even the tracks of the wolves were covered up by those of
+the numerous big huskies. If a cat prowled abroad, or an uneasy dog
+scratched to be let out, there would be a squall, a yelp,--and the cat
+would not come back, and the dog would never scratch at the door to be
+let in again.
+
+Only when nothing stirred in the village, when the dogs and cats had
+been spirited away, and when not even a rat stole from under the houses
+to gnaw at a fishbone, would the fishermen know of their big silent
+visitors. Then the wolves would gather on a snow-drift just outside the
+village and raise a howl, a frightful wail of famine and disappointment,
+that made the air shudder. From within the houses the dogs answered with
+mad clamor. A door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a
+fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and
+capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as
+a bowstring; a sudden yelp--_Hui-hui_, as the fisherman whistled to the
+dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat
+that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in
+vain, and shiver, and go back to the fire again.
+
+Almost every pleasant day a train of dogs would leave the village and go
+far back on the hills to haul fire-wood, or poles for the new
+fish-flakes. The wolves, watching from their old den, would follow at a
+distance to pick up a careless dog that ventured away from the fire to
+hunt rabbits when his harness was taken off. Occasionally a solitary
+wood-chopper would start with sudden alarm as a big white form glided
+into sight, and the alarm would be followed by genuine terror as he
+found himself surrounded by five huge wolves that sat on their tails
+watching him curiously. Gripping his ax he would hurry back to call his
+companions and harness the dogs and hurry back to the village before the
+early darkness should fall upon them. As the komatik went careering over
+the snow, the dogs yelping and straining at the harness, the men running
+alongside shouting _Hi-hi_ and cracking their whips, they could still
+see, over their shoulders, the wolves following lightly close behind;
+but when they rushed breathless into their houses, and grabbed their
+guns, and ran back on the trail, there was nothing to be seen. For the
+wolves, quick as light to feel the presence of danger, were already far
+away, trotting swiftly up the frozen arm of the harbor, following
+another sledge trail which came down that morning from the wilderness.
+
+That same night the wolves appeared silently in the little lodge, far up
+the Southeast Brook, where in a sheltered hollow of the hills the
+fishermen's families were sleeping away the bitter winter. Here for one
+long night they watched and waited in vain; for every living thing was
+safe in the tilts behind barred doors. In the morning little Noel's eyes
+kindled as he saw the wolves' tracks; and when they came back again the
+tilts were watching. As the lop-eared cub darted after a cat that shot
+like a ray of moonlight under a cabin, a window opened noiselessly, and
+_zing!_ a bowstring twanged its sharp warning in the tense silence. With
+a yelp the wolf tore the arrow from his shoulder. The warm blood
+followed the barb, and he lapped it eagerly in his hunger. Then, as the
+danger swept over him, he gave the trail cry and darted away. Doors
+banged open here and there; dogs barked to crack their throats; seal
+guns roared out and sent their heavy echoes crashing like thunder among
+the hills. Silence fell again over the lodge; and there were left only a
+few frightened dogs whose noses had already told them everything, a few
+fishermen who watched and listened, and one Indian boy with a long bow
+in his hand and an arrow ready on the string, who trailed away with a
+little girl at his side trying to puzzle out the track of one wolf that
+left a drop of blood here and there on the snow in the scant moonlight.
+
+Far up on the hillside in a little opening of the woods the scattered
+pack came together again. At the first uproar, so unbearable to a
+silence-loving animal, they had vanished in five different directions;
+yet so subtle, so perfect is the instinct which holds a wolf family
+together that the old mother had scarcely entered the glade alone and
+sat down to wait and listen when the other wolves joined her silently.
+Malsunsis, the big cub, scarcely felt his wound at first, for the arrow
+had but glanced through the thick skin and flesh, and he had torn it out
+without difficulty; but the old he-wolf limped painfully and held up one
+fore leg, pierced by a seal shot, as he loped away over the snow.
+
+It was their first rough experience with men, and probably the one
+feeling in every shaggy head was of puzzled wonder as to how and why it
+had all happened. Hitherto they had avoided men with a certain awe, or
+watched them curiously at a distance, trying to understand their
+superior ways; and never a hostile feeling for the masters of the woods
+had found place in a wolf's breast. Now man had spoken at last; his
+voice was a brutal command to be gone, and curiously enough these
+powerful big brutes, any one of which could have pulled down a man more
+easily than a caribou, never thought of questioning the order.
+
+It was certainly time to follow the caribou--that was probably the one
+definite purpose that came upon the wolves, sitting in a silent,
+questioning circle in the moonlight, with only the deep snows and the
+empty woods around them. For a week they had not touched food; for
+thrice that time they had not fed full, and a few days more would leave
+them unable to cope with the big caribou, which are always full fed and
+strong, thanks to nature's abundance of deer moss on the barrens. So
+they started as by a single impulse, and the mother wolf led them
+swiftly southward, hour after hour at a tireless pace, till the great
+he-wolf weakened and turned aside to nurse his wounded fore leg. The
+lop-eared cub drew out of the race at the same time. His own wound now
+required the soft massage of his tongue to allay the fever; and besides,
+the fear that was born in him, one night long ago, and that had slept
+ever since, was now awake again, and for the first time he was afraid to
+face the famine and the wilderness alone. So the pack swept on, as if
+their feet would never tire, and the two wounded wolves crept into the
+scrub and lay down together.
+
+A strange, terrible feeling stole swiftly over the covert, which had
+always hitherto been a place of rest and quiet content. The cub was
+licking his wound softly when he looked up in sudden alarm, and there
+was the great he-wolf looking at him hungrily, with a frightful flare in
+his green eyes. The cub moved away startled and tried to soothe his
+wound again; but the uncanny feeling was strong upon him still, and when
+he turned his head there was the big wolf, which had crept forward till
+he could see the cub behind a twisted spruce root, watching him steadily
+with the same horrible stare in his unblinking eyes. The hackles rose up
+on the cub's neck and a growl rumbled in his deep chest, for he knew now
+what it all meant. The smell of blood was in the air, and the old
+he-wolf, that had so often shared his kill to save the cubs, was now
+going crazy in his awful hunger. Another moment and there would have
+been a terrible duel in the scrub; but as the wolves sprang to their
+feet and faced each other some deep, unknown feeling stirred within them
+and they turned aside. The old wolf threw himself down heavily, facing
+away from the temptation, and the cub slipped aside to find another den,
+out of sight and smell of the huge leader, lest the scent of blood
+should overcome them again and cause them to fly at each other's throats
+in uncontrollable fury.
+
+Next morning a queer thing happened, but not uncommon under the
+circumstances among wolves and huskies. The cub was lying motionless,
+his head on his paws, his eyes wide open, when something stirred near
+him. A red squirrel came scampering through the scrub branches just
+under the thick coating of snow that filled all their tops. Slowly,
+carefully the young wolf gathered his feet under him, tense as a
+bowstring. As the squirrel whisked overhead the wolf leaped like a
+flash, caught him, and crushed him with a single grip. Then with the
+squirrel in his mouth he made his way back to where the big leader was
+lying, his head on his paws, his eyes turned aside. Slowly, warily the
+cub approached, with a friendly twist of his ears and head, till he laid
+the squirrel at the big wolf's very nose, then drew back a step and lay
+with paws extended and tail thumping the leaves, watching till the
+tidbit was seized ravenously and crushed and bolted in a single
+mouthful. Next instant both wolves sprang to their feet and made their
+way out of the scrub together.
+
+They took up the trail of the pack where they had left it, and followed
+it ten hours, the cub at a swift trot, the old wolf loping along on
+three legs. Then a rest, and forward again, slower and slower, night
+after day in ever-failing strength, till on the edge of a great barren
+they stopped as if struck, trembling all over as the reek of game poured
+into their starving nostrils.
+
+Too weak now to kill or to follow the fleet caribou, they lay down in
+the snow waiting, their ears cocked, their noses questioning every
+breeze for its good news. Left to themselves the trail must end here,
+for they could go no farther; but somewhere ahead in the vast silent
+barren the cubs were trailing, and somewhere beyond them the old mother
+wolf was laying her ambush.--Hark! from a spur of the valley, far below
+on their left, rang out the food cry, singing its way in the frosty air
+over woods and plains, and hurrying back over the trail to tell those
+who had fallen by the way that they were not forgotten. And when they
+leaped up, as at an electric shock, and raced for the cry, there were
+the cubs and the mother wolf, their hunger already satisfied, and there
+in the snow a young bull caribou to save them.
+
+So the long, hard winter passed away, and spring came again with its
+abundance. Grouse drummed a welcome in the woods; the _honk_ of wild
+geese filled the air with a joyous clangor, and in every open pool the
+ducks were quacking. No need now to cling like shadows to the herds of
+caribou, and no further need for the pack to hold together. The ties
+that held them melted like snows in the sunny hollows. First the old
+wolves, then the cubs, one by one drifted away whither the game or their
+new mates were calling them. When the summer came there was another den
+on the high hill overlooking the harbor, where the little brown cubs
+could look down with wonder at the shining sea and the slow
+fishing-boats and the children playing on the shore; but the wolves
+whose trail began there were far away over the mountains, following
+their own ways, waiting for the crisp hunting cry that should bring them
+again together.
+
+
+
+_Trails that Cross in the Snow_
+
+"Are we lost, little brother?" said Mooka, shivering.
+
+No need of the question, startling and terrible as it was from the lips
+of a child astray in the vast solitudes; for a great gale had swooped
+down from the Arctic, blotting out in clouds of whirling snow the world
+of plain and mountain and forest that, a moment before, had stretched
+wide and still before the little hunters' eyes.
+
+For an hour or more, running like startled deer, they had tried to
+follow their own snow-shoe trail back over the wide barrens into the
+friendly woods; but already the snow had filled it brim full, and
+whatever faint trace was left of the long raquettes was caught up by the
+gale and whirled away with a howl of exultation. Before them as they ran
+every trail of wolf and caribou and snow-shoe, and every distant
+landmark, had vanished; the world was but a chaos of mad rolling snow
+clouds; and behind them--Their stout little hearts trembled as they saw
+not a vestige of the trail they had just made. With the great world
+itself, their own little tracks, as fast as they made them, were swept
+and blotted out of existence. Like two sparrows that had dropped blinded
+and bewildered on the vast plain out of the snow cloud, they huddled
+together without one friendly sign to tell them whence they had come or
+whither they were going. Worst of all, the instinct of direction, which
+often guides an Indian through the still fog or the darkest night,
+seemed benumbed by the cold and the tumult; and not even Old Tomah
+himself could have told north or south in the blinding storm.
+
+Still they ran on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, heading the
+wind as best they could, till Mooka, tripping a second time in a little
+hollow where a brook ran deep under the snow, and knowing now that they
+were but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel's arm and repeated
+her question:
+
+"Are we lost, little brother?"
+
+And Noel, lost and bewildered, but gripping his bow in his fur mitten
+and peering here and there, like an old hunter, through the whirling
+flakes and rolling gusts to catch some landmark, some lofty crag or low
+tree-line that held steady in the mad dance of the world, still made
+confident Indian answer:
+
+"Noel not lost; Noel right here. Camp lost, little sister."
+
+"Can we find um, little brother?"
+
+"Oh, yes, we find um. Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now, after
+storm."
+
+"But storm last all night, and it's soon dark. Can we rest and not
+freeze? Mooka tired and--and frightened, little brother."
+
+"Sartin we rest; build um _commoosie_ and sleep jus' like bear in his
+den. Oh, yes, sartin we rest good," said Noel cheerfully.
+
+"And the wolves, little brother?" whispered Mooka, looking back timidly
+into the wild waste out of which they had come.
+
+"Never mind hwolves; nothing hunts in storm, little sister. Come on, we
+must find um woods now."
+
+For one brief moment the little hunter stood with upturned face, while
+Mooka bowed her head silently, and the great storm rolled unheeded over
+them. Still holding his long bow he stretched both hands to the sky in
+the mute appeal that _Keesuolukh_, the Great Mystery whom we call God,
+would understand better than all words. Then turning their backs to the
+gale they drifted swiftly away before it, like two wind-blown leaves,
+running to keep from freezing, and holding each other's hands tight lest
+they separate and be lost by the way.
+
+The second winter had come, sealing up the gloomy land till it rang like
+iron at the touch, then covering it deep with snow and polishing its
+mute white face with hoar-frost and hail driven onward by the fierce
+Arctic gales. An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a
+chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might
+travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early
+twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves,
+the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless,
+hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead.
+
+When the Moon of Famine came, the silence was rudely broken. Before
+daylight one morning, when the air was so tense and still that a whisper
+set it tinkling like silver bells, the rallying cry of the wolves rolled
+down from a mountain top; and the three cubs, that had waited long for
+the signal, left their separate trails far away and hurried to join the
+old leader.
+
+When the sun rose that morning one who stood on the high ridge of the
+Top Gallants, far to the eastward of Harbor Weal, would have seen seven
+trails winding down among the rocks and thickets. It needed only a
+glance to show that the seven trails, each one as clear-cut and delicate
+as that of a prowling fox, were the records of wolves' cautious feet;
+and that they were no longer beating the thickets for grouse and
+rabbits, but moving swiftly all together for the edges of the vast
+barrens where the caribou herds were feeding. Another glance--but here
+we must have the cunning eyes of Old Tomah the hunter--would have told
+that two of the trails were those of enormous wolves which led the pack;
+two others were plainly cubs that had not yet lost the cub trick of
+frolicking in the soft snow; while three others were just wolves, big
+and powerful brutes that moved as if on steel springs, and that still
+held to the old pack because the time had not yet come for them to
+scatter finally to their separate ways and head new packs of their own
+in the great solitudes.
+
+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. They followed stealthily the winding records of a score of
+caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren,
+stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou
+moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two
+Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps,
+scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that
+hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the
+woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So
+they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled
+exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and
+laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail,
+the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and
+swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.
+
+Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white
+surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion
+so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the
+edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had
+been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the
+snow and settle to rest again. But now, where the plain seemed most
+empty and lifeless, seven great white wolves crouched down in the snow
+in a little hollow, their paws extended, their hind legs bent like
+powerful springs beneath them, their heads raised cautiously so that
+only their ears and eyes showed above the rim of the little hollow where
+they hid. So they lay, tense, alert, ready, watching with eager,
+inquisitive eyes the two children drawing steadily nearer, the only sign
+of life in the whole wide, desolate landscape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Follow the back trail of the snow-shoes now, while the wolves are
+waiting, and it leads you over the great barren into the gloomy spruce
+woods; beyond that it crosses two more barrens and stretches of
+intervening forest; then up a great hill and down into a valley, where
+the lodge lay hidden, buried deep under Newfoundland snows.
+
+Here the fishermen lived, sleeping away the bitter winter. In the late
+autumn they had left the fishing village at Harbor Weal, driven out like
+the wild ducks by the fierce gales that raged over the whole coast. With
+their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail
+up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and led into
+a great silent wood, sheltered on every side by the encircling hills.
+Here the tilts were built with double walls, filled in between with
+leaves and moss, to help the little stoves that struggled bravely with
+the terrible cold; and the roofs were covered over with poles and bark,
+or with the brown sails that had once driven the fishing-boats out and
+in on the wings of the gale. The high mountains on the west stood
+between them and the icy winds that swept down over the sea from the
+Labrador and the Arctic wastes; wood in abundance was at their doors,
+and the trout-stream that sang all day long under its bridges of snow
+and ice was always ready to brim their kettles out of its abundance.
+
+So the new life began pleasantly enough; but as the winter wore away and
+provisions grew scarce and game vanished from the coverts, they all felt
+the fearful pinch of famine. Every morning now a confused circle of
+tracks in the snow showed where the wild prowlers of the woods had come
+and sniffed at the very doors of the tilts in their ravening hunger.
+
+Noel's father and Old Tomah were far away, trapping, in the interior;
+and to Noel with his snares and his bow and arrows fell the pleasant
+task of supplying the family's need when the stock of dried fish melted
+away. On this March morning he had started with Mooka at daylight to
+cross the mountains to some great barrens where he had found tracks and
+knew that a few herds of caribou were still feeding. The sun was dimmed
+as it rose, and the sun-dogs gave mute warning of the coming storm; but
+the cupboard was empty at home, and even a little hunter thinks first of
+the game he is following and lets the storm take care of itself. So they
+hurried on unheeding,--Noel with his bow and arrows, Mooka with a little
+bag containing a loaf and a few dried caplin,--peering under every brush
+pile for the shining eyes of a rabbit, and picking up one big grouse and
+a few ptarmigan among the bowlders of a great bare hillside. On the
+edges of the great barren under the Top Gallants they found the fresh
+tracks of feeding caribou, and were following eagerly when they ran
+plump into the wolf trail.
+
+Now by every law of the chase the game belonged to these earlier
+hunters; and by every power in their gaunt, famished bodies the wolves
+meant to have it. So said the trail. Every stealthy advance in single
+file across, the open, every swift rush over the hollows that might hide
+them from eyes watching back from the distant woods, showed the wolves'
+purpose clear as daylight; and had Noel been wiser he would have read a
+warning from the snow and turned aside. But he only drew his longest,
+keenest arrow and pressed on more eagerly than before.
+
+The two trails had crossed each other at last. Beginning near together,
+one on the mountains, the other by the sea, they had followed their
+separate devious ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now
+drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the
+makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly,
+inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them
+apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by
+the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that
+subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild
+rangers of the plains, and that still leads a wolf to follow and watch
+the doings of men with intense curiosity. Now the trails had met fairly
+in the snow, and a few steps more would bring the boy and the wolf face
+to face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Noel was stealing along warily, his arrow ready on the string. Mooka
+beside him was watching a faint cloud of mist, the breath of caribou,
+that blurred at times the dark tree-line in the distance, when one of
+those mysterious warnings that befall the hunter in the far North rested
+upon them suddenly like a heavy hand.
+
+I know not what it is,--what lesser pressure of air, to which we respond
+like a barometer; or what unknown chords there are within us that sleep
+for years in the midst of society and that waken and answer, like an
+animal's, to the subtle influence of nature,--but one can never be
+watched by an unseen wild animal without feeling it vaguely; and one can
+never be so keen on the trail that the storm, before it breaks, will not
+whisper a warning to turn back to shelter before it is too late. To Noel
+and Mooka, alone on the barrens, the sun was no dimmer than before; the
+heavy gray bank of clouds still held sullenly to its place on the
+horizon; and no eyes, however keen, would have noticed the tiny dark
+spots that centered and glowed upon them over the rim of the little
+hollow where the wolves were watching. Nevertheless, a sudden chill fell
+upon them both. They stopped abruptly, shivering a bit, drawing closer
+together and scanning the waste keenly to know what it all meant.
+
+"_Mitcheegeesookh_, the storm!" said Noel sharply; and without another
+word they turned and hurried back on their own trail. In a short half
+hour the world would be swallowed up in chaos. To be caught out on the
+barrens meant to be lost; and to be lost here without fire and shelter
+meant death, swift and sure. So they ran on, hoping to strike the woods
+before the blizzard burst upon them.
+
+They were scarcely half-way to shelter when the white flakes began to
+whirl around them. With startling, terrible swiftness the familiar world
+vanished; the guiding trail was blotted out, and nothing but a wolf's
+instinct could have held a straight course in the blinding fury of the
+storm. Still they held on bravely, trying in vain to keep their
+direction by the eddying winds, till Mooka stumbled twice at the same
+hollow over a hidden brook, and they knew they were running blindly in a
+circle of death. Frightened at the discovery they turned, as the caribou
+do, keeping their backs steadily to the winds, and drifted slowly away
+down the long barren.
+
+Hour after hour they struggled on, hand in hand, without a thought of
+where they were going. Twice Mooka fell and lay still, but was dragged
+to her feet and hurried onward again. The little hunter's own strength
+was almost gone, when a low moan rose steadily above the howl and hiss
+of the gale. It was the spruce woods, bending their tops to the blast
+and groaning at the strain. With a wild whoop Noel plunged forward, and
+the next instant they were safe within the woods. All around them the
+flakes sifted steadily, silently down into the thick covert, while the
+storm passed with a great roar over their heads.
+
+In the lee of a low-branched spruce they stopped again, as though by a
+common impulse, while Noel lifted his hands. "Thanks, thanks,
+_Keesuolukh_; we can take care of ourselves now," the brave little heart
+was singing under the upstretched arms. Then they tumbled into the snow
+and lay for a moment utterly relaxed, like two tired animals, in that
+brief, delicious rest which follows a terrible struggle with the storm
+and cold.
+
+First they ate a little of their bread and fish to keep up their
+spirits; then--for the storm that was upon them might last for
+days--they set about preparing a shelter. With a little search, whooping
+to each other lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that some
+gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried
+about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off
+his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a
+semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a
+deep hole there, with the snow banked up around it to the height of his
+head. Next with his knife he cut a lot of light poles and scrub spruces
+and, sticking the butts in his snowbank, laid the tops, like the sticks
+of a wigwam, firmly against the big stub. A few armfuls of spruce boughs
+shingled over this roof, and a few minutes' work shoveling snow thickly
+upon them to hold them in place and to make a warm covering; then a
+doorway, or rather a narrow tunnel, just beyond the stub on the straight
+side of the semicircle, and their _commoosie_ was all ready. Let the
+storm roar and the snow sift down! The thicker it fell the warmer would
+be their shelter. They laughed and shouted now as they scurried out and
+in, bringing boughs for a bed and the fire-wood which Mooka had
+gathered.
+
+Against the base of the dry stub they built their fire,--a wee, sociable
+little fire such as an Indian always builds, which is far better than a
+big one, for it draws you near and welcomes you cheerily, instead of
+driving you away by its smoke and great heat. Soon the big stub itself
+began to burn, glowing steadily with a heat that filled the snug little
+_commoosie_, while the smoke found its way out of the hole in the roof
+which Noel had left for that purpose. Later the stub burned through to
+its hollow center, and then they had a famous chimney, which soon grew
+hot and glowing inside, and added its mite to the children's comfort.
+
+Noel and Mooka were drowsy now; but before the long night closed in upon
+them they had gathered more wood, and laid aside some wisps of birch
+bark to use when they should wake, cold and shivering, and find their
+little fire gone out and the big stub losing its cheery glow. Then they
+lay down to rest, and the night and the storm rolled on unheeded.
+
+Towards morning they fell into a heavy sleep; for the big stub began to
+burn more freely as the wind changed, and they need not stir every half
+hour to feed their little fire and keep from freezing. It was broad
+daylight, the storm had ceased, and a woodpecker was hammering loudly on
+a hollow shell over their heads when they started up, wondering vaguely
+where they were. Then while Noel broke out of the _commoosie_, which was
+fairly buried under the snow, to find out where he was, Mooka rebuilt
+the fire and plucked a ptarmigan and set it to toasting with the last of
+their bread over the coals.
+
+Noel came back soon with a cheery whoop to tell the little cook that
+they had drifted before the storm down the whole length of the great
+barren, and were camped now on the opposite side, just under the highest
+ridge of the Top Gallants. There was not a track on the barrens, he
+said; not a sign of wolf or caribou, which had probably wandered deeper
+into the woods for shelter. So they ate their bread to the last crumb
+and their bird to the last bone, and, giving up all thought of hunting,
+started up the big barren, heading for the distant Lodge, where they had
+long since been given up for lost.
+
+They had crossed the barren and a mile of thick woods beyond when they
+ran into the fresh trail of a dozen caribou. Following it swiftly they
+came to the edge of a much smaller barren that they had crossed
+yesterday, and saw at a glance that the trail stretched straight across
+it. Not a caribou was in sight; but they might nevertheless be feeding,
+or resting in the woods just beyond; and for the little hunters to show
+themselves now in the open would mean that they would become instantly
+the target for every keen eye that was watching the back trail. So they
+started warily to circle the barren, keeping just within the fringe of
+woods out of sight.
+
+They had gone scarcely a hundred steps when Noel whipped out a long
+arrow and pointed silently across the open. From the woods on the other
+side the caribou had broken out of a dozen tunnels under the spruces,
+and came trotting back in their old trails, straight downwind to where
+the little hunters were hiding.
+
+The deer were acting queerly,--now plunging away with the high, awkward
+jumps that caribou use when startled; now swinging off on their swift,
+tireless rack, and before they had settled to their stride halting
+suddenly to look back and wag their ears at the trail. For Megaleep is
+full of curiosity as a wild turkey, and always stops to get a little
+entertainment out of every new thing that does not threaten him with
+instant death. Then out of the woods behind them trotted five white
+wolves,--not hunting, certainly! for whenever the caribou stopped to
+look the wolves sat down on their tails and yawned. One lay down and
+rolled over and over in the soft snow; another chased and capered after
+his own brush, whirling round and round like a little whirlwind, and the
+shrill _ki-yi_ of a cub wolf playing came faintly across the barren.
+
+It was a strange scene, yet one often witnessed on the lonely plains of
+the far North: the caribou halting, running away, and halting again to
+look back and watch the queer antics of their big enemies, which seemed
+now so playful and harmless; the cunning wolves playing on the game's
+curiosity at every turn, knowing well that if once frightened the deer
+would break away at a pace which would make pursuit hopeless. So they
+followed rather than drove the foolish deer across the barren, holding
+them with monkey tricks and kitten's capers, and restraining with an
+iron grip their own fearful hunger and the blind impulse to rush in
+headlong and have it all quickly over.
+
+Kneeling behind a big spruce, Noel was trying nervously the spring and
+temper of his long bow, divided in desire between the caribou, which
+they needed sadly at home, and one of the great wolves whose death would
+give him a place among the mighty hunters, when Mooka clutched his arm,
+her eyes snapping with excitement, her finger pointing silently back on
+their own trail. A vague shadow glided swiftly among the trees. An
+enormous white wolf appeared, vanished, came near them again, and
+crouched down under a low spruce branch waiting.
+
+Again the two trails had crossed in the snow. The big wolf as he
+appeared had thrust his nose into the snow-shoe tracks, and a sniff or
+two told him everything,--who had passed, and how long ago, and what
+they were doing, and how far ahead they were now waiting. But the
+caribou were coming, coaxed along marvelously by the cubs and the old
+mother; and the great silent wolf, that had left the pack playing with
+the game while he circled the barren at top speed, now turned to the
+business in hand with no thought nor fear of harm from the two children
+whom he had watched but yesterday.
+
+Not so Noel. The fire blazed out in his eyes; the long bow swung to the
+wolf, bending like a steel spring, and the feathered shaft of an arrow
+lay close against the boy's cheek. But Mooka caught his arm--
+
+"Look, Noel, his ear! _Malsunsis_, my little wolf cub," she breathed
+excitedly. And Noel, with a great wonder in his eyes, slacked his bow,
+while his thoughts jumped far away to the den on the mountains where the
+trail began, and to three little cubs playing like kittens with the
+grasshoppers and the cloud shadows; for the great wolf that lay so still
+near them, his eyes fixed in a steady glow upon the coming caribou, had
+one ear bent sharply forward, like a leaf that has been creased between
+the fingers.
+
+Again Mooka broke the tense silence in a low whisper. "How many wolf
+trails you see yesterday, little brother?"
+
+"Seven," said Noel, whose eyes already had the cunning of Old Tomah's to
+understand everything.
+
+"Then where tother wolf? Only six here," breathed Mooka, looking timidly
+all around, fearing to find the steady glare of green eyes fixed upon
+them from the shadow of every thicket.
+
+Noel stirred uneasily. Somewhere close at hand another huge wolf was
+waiting; and a wholesome fear fell upon him, with a shiver at the
+thought of how near he had come in his excitement to bringing the whole
+savage pack snarling about his ears.
+
+A snort of alarm cut short his thinking. There at the edge of the wood,
+not twenty feet away, stood a caribou, pointing his ears at the children
+whom he had almost stumbled over as he ran, thinking only of the wolves
+behind. The long bow sprang back of itself; an arrow buzzed like a wasp
+and buried itself deep in the white chest. Like a flash a second arrow
+followed as the stag turned away, and with a jump or two he sank to his
+knees, as if to rest awhile in the snow.
+
+But Mooka scarcely saw these things. Her eyes were fastened on the great
+white wolf which she had claimed for her own when he was a toddling cub.
+He lay still as a stone under the tip of a bending spruce branch, his
+eyes following every motion of a young bull caribou which three of the
+wolves had singled out of the herd and were now guiding surely straight
+to his hiding-place.
+
+The snort and plunge of the smitten animal startled this young stag and
+he turned aside from his course. Like a shadow the big wolf that Mooka
+was watching changed his place so as to head the game, while two of the
+pack on the open barrens slipped around the caribou and turned him back
+again to the woods. At the edge of the cover the stag stopped for a last
+look, pointing his ears first at Noel's caribou, which now lay very
+still in the snow, then at the wolves, which with quick instinct had
+singled him out of the herd, knowing in some subtle way he was watched
+from beyond, and which gathered about him in a circle, sitting on their
+tails and yawning. Slowly, silently Mooka's wolf crept forward, pushing
+his great body through the snow. A terrific rush, a quick snap under the
+stag's chest just behind the fore legs, where the heart lay; then the
+big wolf leaped aside and sat down quietly again to watch.
+
+It was soon finished. The stag plunged away, settled into his long rack,
+slowed down to a swaying, weakening trot. After him at a distance glided
+the big wolf, lapping eagerly at the crimson trail, but holding himself
+with tremendous will power from rushing in headlong and driving the
+game, which might run for miles if too hard pressed. The stag sank to
+his knees; a sharp yelp rang like a pistol-shot through the still woods;
+then the pack rolled in like a whirlwind, and it was all over.
+
+Creeping near on the trail the little hunters crouched under a low
+spruce, watching as if fascinated the wild feast of the wolves. Noel's
+bow was ready in his hand; but luckily the sight of these huge, powerful
+brutes overwhelmed him and drove all thoughts of killing out of his
+head. Mooka plucked him by the sleeve at last, and pointed silently
+homewards. It was surely time to go, for the biggest wolf had already
+stretched himself and was licking his paws, while the two cubs with full
+stomachs were rolling over and over and biting each other playfully in
+the snow. Silently they stole away, stopping only to tie a rag to a
+pointed stick, which they thrust between their own caribou's ribs to
+make the wolves suspicious and keep them from tearing the game and
+eating the tidbits while the little hunters hurried away to bring the
+men with their guns and dog sledges.
+
+They had almost crossed the second barren when Mooka, looking back
+uneasily from the edge of the woods, saw a single big wolf emerge across
+the barren and follow swiftly on their trail. Startled at the sight,
+they turned swiftly to run; for that terrible feeling which sweeps over
+a hunter, when for the first time he finds himself hunted in his turn,
+had clutched their little hearts and crushed all their confidence. A
+sudden panic seized them; they rushed away for the woods, running side
+by side till they broke into the fringe of evergreen that surrounded the
+barren. There they dropped breathless under a low fir and turned to
+look.
+
+"It was wrong to run, little brother," whispered Mooka.
+
+"Why?" said Noel.
+
+"Cause Wayeeses see it, and think we 'fraid."
+
+"But I was 'fraid out there, little sister," confessed Noel bravely.
+"Here we can climb tree; good chance shoot um with my arrows."
+
+Like two frightened rabbits they crouched under the fir, staring back
+with wild round eyes over the trail, fearing every instant to see the
+savage pack break out of the woods and come howling after them. But only
+the single big wolf appeared, trotting quietly along in their footsteps.
+Within bowshot he stopped with head raised, looking, listening intently.
+Then, as if he had seen them in their hiding, he turned aside, circled
+widely to the left, and entered the woods far below.
+
+Again the two little hunters hurried on through the silent, snow-filled
+woods, a strange disquietude settling upon them as they felt they were
+followed by unseen feet. Soon the feeling grew too strong to resist.
+Noel with his bow ready, and a strange chill trickling like cold water
+along his spine, was hiding behind a tree watching the back trail, when
+a low exclamation from Mooka made him turn. There behind them, not ten
+steps away, a huge white wolf was sitting quietly on his tail, watching
+them with absorbed, silent intentness.
+
+Fear and wonder, and swift memories of Old Tomah and the wolf that had
+followed him when he was lost, swept over Noel in a flood. He rose
+swiftly, the long bow bent, and again a deadly arrow cuddled softly
+against his cheek; but there were doubts and fears in his eye till Mooka
+caught his arm with a glad little laugh--
+
+"My cub, little brother. See his ear, and oh, his tail! Watch um tail,
+little brother." For at the first move the big wolf sprang alertly to
+his feet, looked deep into Mooka's eyes with that intense, penetrating
+light which serves a wild animal to read your very thoughts, and
+instantly his great bushy tail was waving its friendly greeting.
+
+It was indeed Malsunsis, the cub. Before the great storm broke he had
+crouched with the pack in the hollow just in front of the little
+hunters; and although the wolves were hungry, it was with feelings of
+curiosity only that they watched the children, who seemed to the
+powerful brutes hardly more to be feared than a couple of snowbirds
+hopping across the vast barren. But they were children of men--that was
+enough for the white-wolf packs, which for untold years had never been
+known to molest a man. This morning Malsunsis had again crossed their
+trail. He had seen them lying in wait for the caribou that his own pack
+were driving; had seen Noel smite the bull, and was filled with wonder;
+but his own business kept him still in hiding. Now, well fed and
+good-natured, but more curious than ever, he had followed the trail of
+these little folk to learn something about them.
+
+Mooka as she watched him was brim full of an eagerness which swept away
+all fear. "Tomah says, wolf and Injun hunt just alike; keep ver' still;
+don't trouble game 'cept when he hungry," she whispered. "Says too,
+_Keesuolukh_ made us friends 'fore white man come, spoil um everything.
+Das what Malsunsis say now wid hees tail and eyes; only way he can talk
+um, little brother. No, no,"--for Noel's bow was still strongly
+bent,--"you must not shoot. Malsunsis think we friends." And trusting
+her own brave little heart she stepped in front of the deadly arrow and
+walked straight to the big wolf, which moved aside timidly and sat down
+again at a distance, with the friendly expression of a lost collie in
+eyes and ears and wagging tail tip.
+
+Cheerfully enough Noel slacked his long bow, for the wonder of the woods
+was strong upon him, and the hunting-spirit, which leads one forth to
+frighten and kill and to break the blessed peace, had vanished in the
+better sense of comradeship which steals over one when he watches the
+Wood Folk alone and friendly in the midst of the solitudes. As they went
+on their way again the big wolf trotted after them, keeping close to
+their trail but never crossing it, and occasionally ranging up
+alongside, as if to keep them in the right way. Where the woods were
+thickest Noel, with no trail to guide him, swung uncertainly to left and
+right, peering through the trees for some landmark on the distant hills.
+Twice the big wolf trotted out to one side, returned and trotted out
+again in the same direction; and Noel, taking the subtle hint, as an
+Indian always does, bore steadily to the right till the great ridge,
+beyond which the Lodge was hidden, loomed over the tree-tops. And to
+this day he believes--and it is impossible, for I have tried, to
+dissuade him--that the wolf knew where they were going and tried in his
+own way to show them.
+
+So they climbed the long ridge to the summit, and from the deep valley
+beyond the smoke of the Lodge rose up to guide them. There the wolf
+stopped; and though Noel whistled and Mooka called cheerily, as they
+would to one of their own huskies that they had learned to love,
+Malsunsis would go no farther. He sat there on the ridge, his tail
+sweeping a circle in the snow behind him, his ears cocked to the
+friendly call and his eyes following every step of the little hunters,
+till they vanished in the woods below. Then he turned to follow his own
+way in the wilderness.
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
+
+Cheokhes, _chê-ok-h[)e]s'_, the mink.
+
+Cheplahgan, _chep-lâh'gan_, the bald eagle.
+
+Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, _ch`gee-gee'lock-sis_, the chickadee.
+
+Chigwooltz, _chig-wooltz'_, the bullfrog.
+
+Clóte Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians.
+Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc.
+
+Commoosie, _com-moo-sie'_, a little shelter, or hut, of boughs and bark.
+
+Deedeeaskh, _dee-dee'ask_, the blue jay.
+
+Eleemos, _el-ee'mos_, the fox.
+
+Hawahak, _hâ-wâ-h[)a]k'_, the hawk.
+
+Hetokh, _h[)e]t'[=o]kh_, the deer.
+
+Hukweem, _huk-weem'_, the great northern diver, or loon.
+
+Ismaques, _iss-mâ-ques'_, the fish-hawk.
+
+Kagax, _k[)a]g'[)a]x_, the weasel.
+
+Kakagos, _kâ-kâ-g[)o]s'_, the raven.
+
+K'dunk, _k'dunk'_, the toad.
+
+Keeokuskh, _kee-o-kusk'_, the muskrat.
+
+Keeonekh, _kee'o-nek_, the otter.
+
+Keesuolukh, _kee-su-[=o]'luk_, the Great Mystery, i.e. God.
+
+Killooleet, _kil'loo-leet_, the white-throated sparrow.
+
+Kookooskoos, _koo-koo-skoos'_, the great horned owl.
+
+Kopseep, _kop'seep_, the salmon.
+
+Koskomenos, _k[)o]s'k[)o]m-e-n[)o]s'_, the kingfisher.
+
+Kupkawis, _cup-ka'wis_, the barred owl.
+
+Kwaseekho, _kwâ-seek'ho_, the sheldrake.
+
+Lhoks, _locks_, the panther.
+
+Malsun, _m[)a]l'sun_, the wolf.
+
+Malsunsis, _m[)a]l-sun'sis_, the little wolf cub.
+
+Matwock, _m[)a]t'wok_, the white bear.
+
+Meeko, _meek'[=o]_, the red squirrel.
+
+Megaleep, _meg'â-leep_, the caribou.
+
+Milicete, _mil'[)i]-cete_, the name of an Indian tribe; written also
+Malicete.
+
+Mitchegeesookh, _mitch-ë-gee'sook_, the snowstorm.
+
+Mitches, _mit'ch[)e]s_, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse.
+
+Moktaques, _mok-tâ'ques_, the hare.
+
+Mooween, _moo-ween'_, the black bear.
+
+Mooweesuk, _moo-wee'suk_, the coon.
+
+Musquash, _mus'quâsh_, the muskrat.
+
+Nemox, _n[)e]m'ox_, the fisher.
+
+Pekompf, _pe-kompf'_, the wildcat.
+
+Pekquam, _pek-w[)a]m'_, the fisher.
+
+Queokh, _qu[=e]'ok_, the sea-gull.
+
+Quoskh, _quoskh_, the blue heron.
+
+Seksagadagee, _sek'sâ-gä-dâ'gee_, the Canada grouse, or spruce
+partridge.
+
+Skooktum, _skook'tum_, the trout.
+
+Tookhees, _tôk'hees_, the wood-mouse.
+
+Umquenawis, _um-que-nâ'wis_, the moose.
+
+Unk Wunk, _unk'wunk_, the porcupine.
+
+Upweekis, _up-week'iss_, the Canada lynx.
+
+Waptonk, _w[)a]p-tonk'_, the wild goose.
+
+Wayeesis, _way-ee'sis_, the white wolf, the strong one.
+
+Whitooweek, _whit-oo-week'_, the woodcock.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Northern Trails, Book I., by William J. Long
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10389 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Trails, Book I., by William J. Long
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Northern Trails, Book I.
+
+Author: William J. Long
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2003 [EBook #10389]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHERN TRAILS, BOOK I. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Maria Cecilia Lim and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+NORTHERN TRAILS
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+By
+
+William J. Long
+
+
+_WOOD FOLK SERIES BOOK VI_
+
+
+1905
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In the original preface to "Northern Trails" the author stated that,
+with the solitary exception of the salmon's life in the sea after he
+vanishes from human sight, every incident recorded here is founded
+squarely upon personal and accurate observation of animal life and
+habits. I now repeat and emphasize that statement. Even when the
+observations are, for the reader's sake, put into the form of a
+connected story, there is not one trait or habit mentioned which is not
+true to animal life.
+
+Such a statement ought to be enough, especially as I have repeatedly
+furnished evidence from reliable eye-witnesses to support every
+observation that the critics have challenged; but of late a strenuous
+public attack has been made upon the wolf story in this volume by two
+men claiming to speak with authority. They take radical exception to my
+record of a big white wolf killing a young caribou by snapping at the
+chest and heart. They declared this method of killing to be "a
+mathematical impossibility" and, by inference, a gross falsehood,
+utterly ruinous to true ideas of wolves and of natural history.
+
+As no facts or proofs are given to support this charge, the first thing
+which a sensible man naturally does is to examine the fitness of the
+critics, in order to ascertain upon what knowledge or experience they
+base their dogmatic statements. One of these critics is a man who has no
+personal knowledge of wolves or caribou, who asserts that the animal has
+no possibility of reason or intelligence, and who has for years publicly
+denied the observations of other men which tend to disprove his ancient
+theory. It seems hardly worth while to argue about either wolves or men
+with such a naturalist, or to point out that Descartes' idea of animals,
+as purely mechanical or automatic creatures, has long since been laid
+aside and was never considered seriously by any man who had lived close
+to either wild or domestic animals. The second critic's knowledge of
+wolves consists almost entirely of what he has happened to see when
+chasing the creatures with dogs and hunters. Judging by his own nature
+books, with their barbaric records of slaughter, his experience of wild
+animals was gained while killing them. Such a man will undoubtedly
+discover some things about animals, how they fight and hide and escape
+their human enemies; but it hardly needs any argument to show that the
+man who goes into the woods with dogs and rifles and the desire to kill
+can never understand any living animal.
+
+If you examine now any of the little books which he condemns, you will
+find a totally different story: no record of chasing and killing, but
+only of patient watching, of creeping near to wild animals and winning
+their confidence whenever it is possible, of following them day and
+night with no motive but the pure love of the thing and no object but to
+see exactly what each animal is doing and to understand, so far as a man
+can, the mystery of its dumb life.
+
+Naturally a man in this attitude will see many traits of animal life
+which are hidden from the game-killer as well as from the scientific
+collector of skins. For instance, practically all wild animals are shy
+and timid and run away at man's approach. This is the general experience
+not only of hunters but of casual observers in the woods. Yet my own
+experience has many times shown me exactly the opposite trait: that when
+these same shy animals find me unexpectedly close at hand, more than
+half the time they show no fear whatever but only an eager curiosity to
+know who and what the creature is that sits so quietly near them.
+Sometimes, indeed, they seem almost to understand the mental attitude
+which has no thought of harm but only of sympathy and friendly interest.
+Once I was followed for hours by a young wolf which acted precisely like
+a lost dog, too timid to approach and too curious or lonely to run away.
+He even wagged his tail when I called to him softly. Had I shot him on
+sight, I would probably have foolishly believed that he intended to
+attack me when he came trotting along my trail. Three separate times I
+have touched a wild deer with my hand; once I touched a moose, once an
+eagle, once a bear; and a score of times at least I have had to frighten
+these big animals or get out of their way, when their curiosity brought
+them too near for perfect comfort.
+
+So much for the personal element, for the general attitude and fitness
+of the observer and his critics. But the question is not chiefly a
+personal one; it is simply a matter of truth and observation, and the
+only honest or scientific method is, first, to go straight to nature and
+find out the facts; and then--lest your own eyesight or judgment be at
+fault--to consult other observers to find if, perchance, they also have
+seen the facts exemplified. This is not so easy as to dogmatize or to
+write animal stories; but it is the only safe method, and one which the
+nature writer as well as the scientist must follow if his work is to
+endure.
+
+Following this good method, when the critics had proclaimed that my
+record of a big wolf killing a young caribou by biting into the chest
+and heart was an impossibility, I went straight to the big woods and, as
+soon as the law allowed, secured photographs and exact measurements of
+the first full-grown deer that crossed my trail. These photographs and
+measurements show beyond any possibility of honest doubt the following
+facts: (1) The lower chest of a deer, between and just behind the
+forelegs, is thin and wedge-shaped, exactly as I stated, and the point
+of the heart is well down in this narrow wedge. The distance through the
+chest and point of the heart from side to side was, in this case,
+exactly four and one-half inches. A man's hand, as shown in the
+photograph, can easily grasp the whole lower chest of a deer, placing
+thumb and forefinger over the heart on opposite sides. (2) The heart of
+a deer, and indeed of all ruminant animals, lies close against the chest
+walls and is easily reached and wounded. The chest cartilage, except in
+an old deer, is soft; the ribs are thin and easily crushed, and the
+spaces between the ribs are wide enough to admit a man's finger, to say
+nothing of a wolf's fang. In this case the point of the heart, as the
+deer lay on his side, was barely five eights of an inch from the
+surface. (3) Any dog or wolf, therefore, having a spread of jaws of four
+and one-half inches, and fangs three quarters of an inch long, could
+easily grasp the chest of this deer from beneath and reach the heart
+from either side. As the jaws of the big northern wolf spread from six
+to eight inches and his fangs are over an inch long, to kill a deer in
+this way would require but a slight effort. The chest of a caribou is
+anatomically exactly like that of other deer; only the caribou fawn and
+yearling of "Northern Trails" have smaller chests than the animals I
+measured.
+
+So much for the facts and the possibilities. As for specific instances,
+years ago I found a deer just killed in the snow and beside him the
+fresh tracks of a big wolf, which had probably been frightened away at
+my approach. The deer was bitten just behind and beneath the left
+shoulder, and one long fang had entered the heart. There was not another
+scratch on the body, so far as I could discover. I thought this very
+exceptional at the time; but years afterwards my Indian guide in the
+interior of Newfoundland assured me that it was a common habit of
+killing caribou among the big white wolves with which he was familiar.
+To show that the peculiar habit is not confined to any one section, I
+quote here from the sworn statements of three other eyewitnesses. The
+first is superintendent of the Algonquin National Park, a man who has
+spent a lifetime in the North Woods and who has at present an excellent
+opportunity for observing wild-animal habits; the second is an educated
+Sioux Indian; the third is a geologist and mining engineer, now
+practicing his profession in Philadelphia.
+
+
+ALGONQUIN PARK, ONTARIO, August 31, 1907.
+
+This certifies that during the past thirty years spent in our Canadian
+wilds, I have seen several animals killed by our large timber wolves. In
+the winter of 1903 I saw two deer thus killed on Smoke Lake, Nipissing,
+Ontario. One deer was bitten through the front chest, the other just
+behind the foreleg. In each case there was no other wound on the body.
+
+[Signed] G.W. BARTLETT, _Superintendent_.
+
+
+I certify that I lived for twenty years in northern Nebraska and Dakota,
+in a region where timber wolves were abundant.... I saw one horse that
+had just been killed by a wolf. The front of his chest was torn open to
+the heart. There was no other wound on the body. I once watched a wolf
+kill a stray horse on the open prairie. He kept nipping at the hind
+legs, making the horse turn rapidly till he grew dizzy and fell down.
+Then the wolf snapped or bit into his chest.... The horse died in a few
+moments.
+
+[Signed] STEPHEN JONES (HEPIDAN).
+
+
+I certify that in November, 1900, while surveying in Wyoming, my party
+saw two wolves chase a two-year-old colt over a cliff some fifteen or
+sixteen feet high. I was on the spot with two others immediately after
+the incident occurred. The only injuries to the colt, aside from a
+broken leg, were deep lacerations made by wolf fangs in the chest behind
+the foreshoulder. In addition to this personal observation I have
+frequently heard from hunters, herders, and cowboys that big wolves
+frequently kill deer and other animals by snapping at the chest.
+
+[Signed] F.S. PUSEY.
+
+
+I have more evidence of the same kind from the region which I described
+in "Northern Trails"; but I give these three simply to show that what
+one man discovers as a surprising trait of some individual wolf or deer
+may be common enough when we open our eyes to see. The fact that wolves
+do not always or often kill in this way has nothing to do with the
+question. I know one small region where old wolves generally hunt in
+pairs and, so far as I can discover, one wolf always trips or throws the
+game, while the other invariably does the killing at the throat. In
+another region, including a part of Algonquin Park, in Ontario, I have
+the records of several deer killed by wolves in a single winter; and in
+every case the wolf slipped up behind his game and cut the femoral
+artery, or the inner side of the hind leg, and then drew back quietly,
+allowing the deer to bleed to death.
+
+The point is, that because a thing is unusual or interesting it is not
+necessarily false, as my dogmatic critics would have you believe. I have
+studied animals, not as species but as individuals, and have recorded
+some things which other and better naturalists have overlooked; but I
+have sought for facts, first of all, as zealously as any biologist, and
+have recorded only what I have every reason to believe is true. That
+these facts are unusual means simply that we have at last found natural
+history to be interesting, just as the discovery of unusual men and
+incidents gives charm and meaning to the records of our humanity. There
+may be honest errors or mistakes in these books--and no one tries half
+so hard as the author to find and correct them--but meanwhile the fact
+remains that, though six volumes of the Wood Folk books have already
+been published, only three slight errors have thus far been pointed out,
+and these were promptly and gratefully acknowledged.
+
+The simple truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all
+true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things
+that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are
+not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our
+preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt that romancing is
+rife just now on the part of men who study animals in a library; but
+personally, with my note-books full of incidents which I have never yet
+recorded, I find the truth more interesting, and I cannot understand why
+a man should deliberately choose romance when he can have the greater
+joy of going into the wilderness to see with his own eyes and to
+understand with his own heart just how the animals live. One thing seems
+to me to be more and more certain: that we are only just beginning to
+understand wild animals, and it is chiefly our own barbarism, our lust
+of killing, our stupid stuffed specimens, and especially our prejudices
+which stand in the way of greater knowledge. Meanwhile the critic who
+asserts dogmatically what a wild animal will or will not do under
+certain conditions only proves how carelessly he has watched them and
+how little he has learned of Nature's infinite variety.
+
+WILLIAM J. LONG
+
+STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
+
+THE OLD WOLF'S CHALLENGE
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL BEGINS
+
+NOEL AND MOOKA
+
+THE WAY OF THE WOLF
+
+THE WHITE WOLF'S HUNTING
+
+TRAILS THAT CROSS IN THE SNOW
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
+
+
+
+FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"A QUICK SNAP WHERE THE HEART LAY"
+
+"THE TERRIBLE HOWL OF A GREAT WHITE WOLF"
+
+"WATCHING HER GROWING YOUNGSTERS"
+
+"AS THE MOTHER'S LONG JAWS CLOSED OVER THE SMALL OF THE BACK"
+
+"THE SILENT, APPALLING DEATH-WATCH BEGAN"
+
+
+
+WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
+
+
+
+_The Old Wolf's Challenge_
+
+We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped
+down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the
+mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black
+rocks and the reefs bared their teeth on either side, like the long jaws
+of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed.
+
+In our flight we had picked up a fisherman--snatched him out of his
+helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him
+aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet--and it was
+he who now stood at the wheel of our little schooner and took her
+careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate,
+rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the _Wild Duck_ swung to
+her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and
+clanking her chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At
+sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and
+clear over the dark mountains.
+
+Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the
+foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, every man glad in his
+heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the
+desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness
+brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black
+rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered
+the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver in the
+moonlight; far away, like a vague shadow, a handful of little gray
+houses clung like barnacles to the base of a great bare hill whose foot
+was in the sea and whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not a
+light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from these little
+houses, whose shells close daily at twilight over the life within, weary
+with the day's work. Only the dogs were restless--those strange
+creatures that shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in
+another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out from ours by
+impassable barriers.
+
+For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry
+brutes that drew the sledges in winter and that picked up a vagabond
+living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's
+flakes and pig-pens and by catching flounders in the sea as the tide
+ebbed. Venture among them with fear in your heart and they would fly at
+your legs and throat like wild beasts; but twirl a big stick jauntily,
+or better still go quietly on your way without concern, and they would
+skulk aside and watch you hungrily out of the corners of their surly
+eyes, whose lids were red and bloodshot as a mastiff's. When the moon
+rose I noticed them flitting about like witches on the lonely shore,
+miles away from the hamlet; now sitting on their tails in a solemn
+circle; now howling all together as if demented, and anon listening
+intently in the vast silence, as if they heard or smelled or perhaps
+just felt the presence of some unknown thing that was hidden from human
+senses. And when I paddled ashore to watch them one ran swiftly past
+without heeding me, his nose outstretched, his eyes green as foxfire in
+the moonlight, while the others vanished like shadows among the black
+rocks, each intent on his unknown quest.
+
+That is why I had come up from my warm bunk at midnight to sit alone on
+the taffrail, listening in the keen air to the howling that made me
+shiver, spite of myself, and watching in the vague moonlight to
+understand if possible what the brutes felt amid the primal silence and
+desolation.
+
+A long interval of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make
+out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when
+suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the
+mountains, _ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ a long wailing crescendo beginning
+softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the
+sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to
+crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into
+indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to
+certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping
+within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased
+abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks. From
+far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the
+cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep. Then
+silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a
+winding-sheet.
+
+As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept
+undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the
+foremast. As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the
+night he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching
+alone. "Das Wayeeses. I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh, long,
+long while ago," he whispered. And taking my marine glasses he stood
+beside me watching intently.
+
+[Illustration: "The terrible howl of the great white wolf"]
+
+There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled as
+they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we turned
+our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for the
+challenge. Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught something
+moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain. A shadow with the slinking
+trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the moon. Just in
+front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a pointed nose up
+to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight,
+and--_ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ the terrible howl of a great white wolf
+tumbled down on the husky dogs and set them howling as if possessed. No
+doubt now of their queer actions which had puzzled me for hours past.
+The wild wolf had called and the tame wolves waked to answer. Before my
+dull ears had heard a rumor of it they were crazy with the excitement.
+Now every chord in their wild hearts was twanging its thrilling answer
+to the leader's summons, and my own heart awoke and thrilled as it never
+did before to the call of a wild beast.
+
+For an hour or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate
+mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be
+free again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs,
+which refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from
+overmastering temptation. Then the shadow vanished from the big rock on
+the mountain, the huskies fled away wildly from the shore, and only the
+sob of the breakers broke the stillness.
+
+That was my first (and Noel's last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the
+huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea to
+study. All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed him,
+guided sometimes by a rumor--a hunter's story or a postman's fright,
+caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with his dogs
+through the long winter night--and again by a track on the shore of some
+lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou flying wildly
+from some unseen danger. Here is the white wolf's story, learned partly
+from much watching and following his tracks alone, but more from Noel
+the Indian hunter, in endless tramps over the hills and caribou marshes
+and in long quiet talks in the firelight beside the salmon rivers.
+
+
+
+_Where the Trail Begins_
+
+From a cave in the rocks, on the unnamed mountains that tower over
+Harbor Weal on the north and east, a huge mother wolf appeared,
+stealthily, as all wolves come out of their dens. A pair of green eyes
+glowed steadily like coals deep within the dark entrance; a massive gray
+head rested unseen against the lichens of a gray rock; then the whole
+gaunt body glided like a passing cloud shadow into the June sunshine and
+was lost in a cleft of the rocks.
+
+There, in the deep shadow where no eye might notice the movement, the
+old wolf shook off the delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all
+her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the
+toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders
+till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out
+straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little
+jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and
+showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs
+that could reach a deer's heart in a single snap. Then she leaped upon a
+great rock and sat up straight, with her bushy tail curled close about
+her fore paws, a savage, powerful, noble-looking beast, peering down
+gravely over the green mountains to the shining sea.
+
+A moment before the hillside had appeared utterly lifeless, so still and
+rugged and desolate that one must notice and welcome the stir of a mouse
+or ground squirrel in the moss, speaking of life that is glad and free
+and vigorous even in the deepest solitudes; yet now, so quietly did the
+old wolf appear, so perfectly did her rough gray coat blend with the
+rough gray rocks, that the hillside seemed just as tenantless as before.
+A stray wind seemed to move the mosses, that was all. Only where the
+mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw every
+moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats
+far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every
+chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was
+holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For
+the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world,
+and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite
+precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid.
+
+A faint breeze from the west strayed over the mountains and instantly
+the old wolf turned her sensitive nose to question it. There on her
+right, and just across a deep ravine where a torrent went leaping down
+to the sea in hundred-foot jumps, a great stag caribou was standing,
+still as a stone, on a lofty pinnacle, looking down over the marvelous
+panorama spread wide beneath his feet. Every day Megaleep came there to
+look, and the old wolf in her daily hunts often crossed the deep path
+which he had worn through the moss from the wide table-lands over the
+ridge to this sightly place where he could look down curiously at the
+comings and goings of men on the sea. But at this season when small game
+was abundant--and indeed at all seasons when not hunger-driven--the wolf
+was peaceable and the caribou were not molested. Indeed the big stag
+knew well where the old wolf denned. Every east wind brought her message
+to his nostrils; but secure in his own strength and in the general peace
+which prevails in the summer-time among all large animals of the north,
+he came daily to look down on the harbor and wag his ears at the
+fishing-boats, which he could never understand.
+
+Strange neighbors these, the grim, savage mother wolf of the mountains,
+hiding her young in dens of the rocks, and the wary, magnificent
+wanderer of the broad caribou barrens; but they understood each other,
+and neither wolf nor caribou had any fear or hostile intent one for the
+other. And this is not strange at all, as might be supposed by those who
+think animals are governed by fear on one hand and savage cruelty on the
+other, but is one of the commonest things to be found by those who
+follow faithfully the northern trails.
+
+Wayeeses had chosen her den well, on the edge of the untrodden
+solitudes--sixty miles as the crow flies--that stretch northward from
+Harbor Weal to Harbor Woe. It was just under the ridge, in a sunny
+hollow among the rocks, on the southern slope of the great mountains.
+The earliest sunshine found the place and warmed it, bringing forth the
+bluebells for a carpet, while in every dark hollow the snow lingered all
+summer long, making dazzling white patches on the mountain; and under
+the high waterfalls, that looked from the harbor like bits of silver
+ribbon stretched over the green woods, the ice clung to the rocks in
+fantastic knobs and gargoyles, making cold, deep pools for the trout to
+play in. So it was both cool and warm there, and whatever the weather
+the gaunt old mother wolf could always find just the right spot to sleep
+away the afternoon. Best of all it was perfectly safe; for though from
+the door of her den she could look down on the old Indian's cabin, like
+a pebble on the shore, so steep were the billowing hills and so
+impassable the ravines that no human foot ever trod the place, not even
+in autumn when the fishermen left their boats at anchor in Harbor Weal
+and camped inland on the paths of the big caribou herds.
+
+Whether or not the father wolf ever knew where his cubs were hidden only
+he himself could tell. He was an enormous brute, powerful and cunning
+beyond measure, that haunted the lonely thickets and ponds bordering the
+great caribou barrens over the ridge, and that kept a silent watch,
+within howling distance, over the den which he never saw. Sometimes the
+mother wolf met him on her wanderings and they hunted together. Often he
+brought the game he had caught, a fox or a young goose; and sometimes
+when she had hunted in vain he met her, as if he had understood her need
+from a distance, and led her to where he had buried two or three of the
+rabbits that swarmed in the thickets. But spite of the attention and the
+indifferent watch which he kept, he never ventured near the den, which
+he could have found easily enough by following the mother's track. The
+old she-wolf would have flown at his throat like a fury had he showed
+his head over the top of the ridge.
+
+The reason for this was simple enough to the savage old mother, though
+there are some things about it that men do not yet understand. Wolves,
+like cats and foxes, and indeed like most wild male animals, have an
+atrocious way of killing their own young when they find them
+unprotected; so the mother animal searches out a den by herself and
+rarely allows the male to come near it. Spite of this beastly habit it
+must be said honestly of the old he-wolf that he shows a marvelous
+gentleness towards his mate. He runs at the slightest show of teeth from
+a mother wolf half his size, and will stand meekly a snap of the jaws or
+a cruel gash of the terrible fangs in his flank without defending
+himself. Even our hounds seem to have inherited something of this
+primitive wolf trait, for there are seasons when, unless urged on by
+men, they will not trouble a mother wolf or fox. Many times, in the
+early spring, when foxes are mating, and again later when they are heavy
+with young and incapable of a hard run, I have caught my hounds trotting
+meekly after a mother fox, sniffing her trail indifferently and sitting
+down with heads turned aside when she stops for a moment to watch and
+yap at them disdainfully. And when you call them they come shamefaced;
+though in winter-time, when running the same fox to death, they pay no
+more heed to your call than to the crows clamoring over them. But we
+must return to Wayeeses, sitting over her den on a great gray rock,
+trying every breeze, searching every movement, harking to every chirp
+and rustle before bringing her cubs out into the world.
+
+Satisfied at last with her silent investigation she turned her head
+towards the den. There was no sound, only one of those silent, unknown
+communications that pass between animals. Instantly there was a
+scratching, scurrying, whining, and three cubs tumbled out of the dark
+hole in the rocks, with fuzzy yellow fur and bright eyes and sharp ears
+and noses, like collies, all blinking and wondering and suddenly silent
+at the big bright world which they had never seen before, so different
+from the dark den under the rocks.
+
+Indeed it was a marvelous world that the little cubs looked upon when
+they came out to blink and wonder in the June sunshine. Contrasts
+everywhere, that made the world seem too big for one little glance to
+comprehend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and quivered on
+the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud shadows rested for hours, as if
+asleep, or swept over the mountain side in an endless game of
+fox-and-geese with the sunbeams. Here the birds trilled, the bees hummed
+in the bluebells, the brook roared and sang on its way to the sea; while
+over all the harmony of the world brooded a silence too great to be
+disturbed. Sunlight and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines and
+dazzling mountain tops, mayflowers and singing birds and rustling winds
+filled all the earth with color and movement and melody. From under
+their very feet great masses of rock, tossed and tumbled as by a giant's
+play, stretched downwards to where the green woods began and rolled in
+vast billows to the harbor, which shone and sparkled in the sun, yet
+seemed no bigger than their mother's paw. Fishing-boats with shining
+sails hovered over it, like dragon-flies, going and coming from the
+little houses that sheltered together under the opposite mountain, like
+a cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine stump. Most wonderful,
+most interesting of all was the little gray hut on the shore, almost
+under their feet, where little Noel and the Indian children played with
+the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the fishermen
+in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf cubs are like collies in this, that they
+seem to have a natural interest, perhaps a natural kinship with man, and
+next to their own kind nothing arouses their interest like a group of
+children playing.
+
+So the little cubs took their first glimpse of the big world, of
+mountains and sea and sunshine, and children playing on the shore, and
+the world was altogether too wonderful for little heads to comprehend.
+Nevertheless one plain impression remained, the same that you see in the
+ears and nose and stumbling feet and wagging tail of every puppy-dog you
+meet on the streets, that this bright world is a famous place, just made
+a-purpose for little ones to play in. Sitting on their tails in a solemn
+row the wolf cubs bent their heads and pointed their noses gravely at
+the sea. There it was, all silver and blue and boundless, with tiny
+white sails dancing over it, winking and flashing like entangled bits of
+sunshine; and since the eyes of a cub, like those of a little child,
+cannot judge distances, one stretched a paw at the nearest sail, miles
+away, to turn it over and make it go the other way. They turned up their
+heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite,
+with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one
+stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to
+pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near
+them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday,
+and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took
+to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over each
+other, while the gaunt old mother wolf looked down from her rock and
+watched and was satisfied.
+
+
+
+_Noel and Mooka_
+
+Down on the shore, that same bright June afternoon, little Noel and his
+sister Mooka were going on wonderful sledge journeys, meeting wolves and
+polar bears and caribou and all sorts of adventures, more wonderful by
+far than any that ever came to imagination astride of a rocking-horse.
+They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the
+rest,--five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a
+tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a
+bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand,
+waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside,
+cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar! Hiya, Wolf! Hi, hiya,
+hiya, yeeee!"--and then shrieking with laughter as the sledge overturned
+and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness,
+just like the husky dogs in winter. Mooka was trying to untangle them,
+dancing about to keep her bare toes and fingers away from the nipping
+claws, when she jumped up with a yell, the biggest crab hanging to the
+end of her finger.
+
+"Owee! oweeeee! Caesar bit me," she wailed. Then she stopped, with
+finger in her mouth, while Caesar scrambled headlong into the tide; for
+Noel was standing on the beach pointing at a brown sail far down in the
+deep bay, where Southeast Brook came singing from the green wilderness.
+
+"Ohé, Mooka! there's father and Old Tomah come back from salmon
+fishing."
+
+"Let's go meet um, little brother," said Mooka, her black eyes dancing;
+and in a wink crabs and sledges were forgotten. The old punt was off in
+a shake, the tattered sail up, skipper Noel lounging in the stern, like
+an old salt, with the steering oar, while the crew, forgetting her
+nipped finger, tugged valiantly at the main-sheet.
+
+They were scooting away gloriously, rising and pounding the waves, when
+Mooka, who did not have to steer and whose restless glance was roving
+over every bay and hillside, jumped up, her eyes round as lynx's.
+
+"Look, Noel, look! There's Megaleep again watching us." And Noel,
+following her finger, saw far up on the mountain a stag caribou, small
+and fine and clear as a cameo against the blue sky, where they had so
+often noticed him with wonder watching them as they came shouting home
+with the tide. Instantly Noel threw himself against the steering oar;
+the punt came up floundering and shaking in the wind.
+
+"Come on, little sister; we can go up Fox Brook. Tomah showed me trail."
+And forgetting the salmon, as they had a moment before forgotten the
+crabs and sledges, these two children of the wild, following every
+breeze and bird call and blossoming bluebell and shining star alike,
+tumbled ashore and went hurrying up the brook, splashing through the
+shallows, darting like kingfishers over the points, and jumping like
+wild goats from rock to rock. In an hour they were far up the mountain,
+lying side by side on a great flat rock, looking across a deep
+impassable valley and over two rounded hilltops, where the scrub spruces
+looked like pins on a cushion, to the bare, rugged hillside where
+Megaleep stood out like a watchman against the blue sky.
+
+"Does he see us, little brother?" whispered Mooka, quivering with
+excitement and panting from the rapid climb.
+
+"See us? sartin, little sister; but that only make him want peek um some
+more," said the little hunter. And raised carelessly on his elbows he
+was telling Mooka how Megaleep the caribou trusted only his nose, and
+how he watched and played peekaboo with anything which he could not
+smell, and how in a snowstorm--
+
+Noel was off now like a brook, babbling a deal of caribou lore which he
+had learned from Old Tomah the hunter, when Mooka, whose restless black
+eyes were always wandering, seized his arm.
+
+"Hush, brother, and look, oh, look! there on the big rock!"
+
+Noel's eyes had already caught the Indian trick of seeing only what they
+look for, and so of separating an animal instantly from his
+surroundings, however well he hides. That is why the whole hillside
+seemed suddenly to vanish, spruces and harebells, snow-fields and
+drifting white clouds all grouping themselves, like the unnoticed frame
+of a picture, around a great gray rock with a huge shaggy she-wolf
+keeping watch over it, silent, alert, motionless.
+
+Something stirred in the shadow of the old wolf's watch-tower, tossing
+and eddying and growing suddenly quiet, as if the wind were playing
+among dead oak leaves. The keen young eyes saw it instantly, dilating
+with surprise and excitement. The next instant they had clutched each
+other's arms.
+
+"Ooooo!" from Mooka.
+
+"Cubs; keep still!" from Noel.
+
+And shrinking close to the rock under a friendly dwarf spruce they lay
+still as two rabbits, watching with round eyes, eager but unafraid, the
+antics of three brown wolf cubs that were chasing the flies and tumbling
+over some invisible plaything before the door of the den.
+
+Hardly had they made the discovery when the old wolf slipped down from
+the rock and stood for an instant over her little ones. Why the play
+should stop now, while the breeze was still their comrade and the
+sunshine was brighter than ever, or why they should steal away into the
+dark den more silently than they had come, none of the cubs could tell.
+They felt the order and they obeyed instantly--and that is always the
+wonder of watching little wild things at play. The old mother wolf
+vanished among the rocks and appeared again higher on the ridge, turning
+her head uneasily to try every breeze and rustle and moving shadow. Then
+she went questing into the spruce woods, feeling but not understanding
+some subtle excitement in the air that was not there before, and only
+the two Indian children were left keeping watch over the great wild
+hillside.
+
+For over an hour they lay there expectantly, but nothing stirred near
+the den; then they too slipped away, silently as the little wild things,
+and made their slow way down the brook, hand in hand in the deepening
+shadows. Scarcely had they gone when the bushes stirred and the old
+she-wolf, that had been ranging every ridge and valley since she
+disappeared at the unknown alarm, glided over the spot where a moment
+before Mooka and Noel had been watching. Swiftly, silently she followed
+their steps; found the old trails coming up and the fresh trails
+returning; then, sure at last that no danger threatened her own little
+ones, she loped away up the hill and over the topmost ridge to the
+caribou barrens and the thickets where young rabbits were already
+stirring about in the twilight.
+
+That night, in the cabin under the cliffs, Old Tomah had to rehearse
+again all the wolf lore learned in sixty years of hunting: how,
+fortunately for the deer, these enormous wolves had never been abundant
+and were now very rare, a few having been shot, and more poisoned in the
+starving times, and the rest having vanished, mysteriously as wolves do,
+for some unknown reason. Bears, which are easily trapped and shot and
+whose skins are worth each a month's wages to the fishermen, still hold
+their own and even increase on the great island; while the wolves, once
+more numerous, are slowly vanishing, though they are never hunted, and
+not even Old Tomah himself could set a trap cunningly enough to catch
+one. The old hunter told, while Mooka and Noel held their breaths and
+drew closer to the light, how once, when he made his camp alone under a
+cliff on the lake shore, seven huge wolves, white as the snow, came
+racing swift and silent over the ice straight at the fire which he had
+barely time to kindle; how he shot two, and the others, seizing the fish
+he had just caught through the ice for his own supper, vanished over the
+bank; and he could not say even now whether they meant him harm or no.
+Again, as he talked and the grim old face lighted up at the memory, they
+saw him crouched with his sledge-dogs by a blazing fire all the long
+winter night, and around him in the darkness blazing points of light,
+the eyes of wolves flashing back the firelight, and gaunt white forms
+flitting about like shadows, drawing nearer and nearer with ever-growing
+boldness till they seized his largest dog--though the brute lay so near
+the fire that his hair singed--and whisked it away with an appalling
+outcry. And still again, when Tomah was lost three days in the interior,
+they saw him wandering with his pack over endless barrens and through
+gloomy spruce woods, and near him all the time a young wolf that
+followed his steps quietly, with half-friendly interest, and came no
+nearer day or night.
+
+All these things and many more the children heard from Old Tomah, and
+among all his hunting experiences and the stories and legends which he
+told them there was not one to make them afraid. For the horrible story
+of Red Riding Hood is not known among the Indians, who know well how
+untrue the tale is to wolf nature, and how foolish it is to frighten
+children with false stories of wolves and bears, misrepresenting them as
+savage and bloodthirsty brutes, when in truth they are but shy,
+peace-loving animals, whose only motive toward man, except when crazed
+by wounds or hunger, is one of childish curiosity. All these ferocious
+animal stories have their origin in other centuries and in distant
+lands, where they may possibly have been true, but more probably are
+just as false to animal nature; for they seem to reflect not the shy
+animal that men glimpsed in the woods, but rather the boastings of some
+hunter, who always magnifies his own praise by increasing the ferocity
+of the game he has killed, or else the pure imagination of some ancient
+nurse who tried to increase her scant authority by frightening her
+children with terrible tales. Here certainly the Indian attitude of
+kinship, gained by long centuries of living near to the animals and
+watching them closely, comes nearer to the truth of things. That is why
+little Mooka and Noel could listen for hours to Old Tomah's animal
+stories and then go away to bed and happy dreams, longing for the light
+so that they might be off again to watch at the wolf's den.
+
+One thing only disturbed them for a moment. Even these children had wolf
+memories and vied with Old Tomah in eagerness of telling. They
+remembered one fearful winter, years ago, when most of the families of
+the little fishing village on the East Harbor had moved far inland to
+sheltered cabins in the deep woods to escape the cold and the fearful
+blizzards of the coast. One still moonlit night, when the snow lay deep
+and the cold was intense and all the trees were cracking like pistols in
+the frost, a mournful howling rose all around their little cabin. Light
+footfalls sounded on the crust; there were scratchings at the very door
+and hoarse breathings at every crack; while the dogs, with hackles up
+straight and stiff on their necks, fled howling under beds and tables.
+And when Mooka and Noel went fearfully with their mother to the little
+window--for the men were far away on a caribou hunt--there were gaunt
+white wolves, five or six of them, flitting restlessly about in the
+moonlight, scratching at the cracks and even raising themselves on their
+hind legs to look in at the little windows.
+
+Mooka shivered a bit when she remembered the uncanny scene, and felt
+again the strong pressure of her mother's arms holding her close; but
+Old Tomah brushed away her fears with a smile and a word, as he had
+always done when, as little children, they had showed fear at the
+thunder or the gale or the cry of a wild beast in the night, till they
+had grown to look upon all Nature's phenomena as hiding a smile as
+kindly as that of Old Tomah himself, who had a face wrinkled and
+terribly grim, to be sure, but who could smile and tell a story so that
+every child trusted him. The wolves were hungry, starving hungry, he
+said, and wanted only a dog, or one of the pigs. And Mooka remembered
+with a bright laugh the two unruly pigs that had been taken inland as a
+hostage to famine, and that must be carefully guarded from the teeth of
+hungry prowlers, for they would soon be needed to keep the children
+themselves from starving. Every night at early sunset, when the trees
+began to groan and the keen winds from the mountains came whispering
+through the woods, the two pigs were taken into the snug kitchen, where
+with the dogs they slept so close to the stove that she could always
+smell pork a-frying. Not a husky dog there but would have killed and
+eaten one of these little pigs if he could have caught him around the
+corner of the house after nightfall, though you would never have
+suspected it if you had seen them so close together, keeping each other
+warm after the fire went out. And besides the dogs and the wolves there
+were lynxes--big, round-headed, savage-looking creatures--that came
+prowling out of the deep woods every night, hungry for a taste of the
+little pigs; and now and then an enormous polar bear, that had landed
+from an iceberg, would shuffle swiftly and fearlessly among the handful
+of little cabins, leaving his great footprints in every yard and tearing
+to pieces, as if made of straw, the heavy log pens to which some of the
+fishermen had foolishly confided their pigs or sheep. He even entered
+the woodsheds and rummaged about after a stray fishbone or an old
+sealskin boot, making a great rowdydow in the still night; and only the
+smell of man, or the report of an old gun fired at him by some brave
+woman out of the half-open window, kept him from pushing his enormous
+weight against the very doors of the cabins.
+
+Thinking of all these things, Mooka forgot her fears of the white
+wolves, remembering with a kind of sympathy how hungry all these shy
+prowlers must be to leave their own haunts, whence the rabbits and seals
+had vanished, and venture boldly into the yards of men. As for Noel, he
+remembered with regret that he was too small at the time to use the long
+bow which he now carried on his rabbit and goose hunts; and as he took
+it from the wall, thrumming its chord of caribou sinew and fingering the
+sharp edge of a long arrow, he was hoping for just such another winter,
+longing to try his skill and strength on some of these midnight
+prowlers--a lynx, perhaps, not to begin too largely on a polar bear. So
+there was no fear at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed
+up the brook next day to watch at the wolf's den. And even when Noel
+found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog's,
+in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently
+following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed
+Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.
+
+Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under
+the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side
+they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more
+interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding
+the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in
+wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also
+something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down
+gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters. Once they
+brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and
+through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was
+larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear,
+like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.
+Mooka claimed that wolf instantly for her own, as if they were watching
+the husky puppies, and by his broken ear said she should know him again
+when he grew to be a big wolf, if he should ever follow her, as his
+father perhaps had followed Old Tomah; but Noel, thinking of his bow and
+his long arrow with the sharp point, thought of the winter night long
+ago and hoped that his two wolves would know enough to keep away when
+the pack came again, for he did not see any way to recognize and spare
+them, especially in the moonlight. So they lay there making plans and
+dreaming dreams, gentle or savage, for the little cubs that played with
+the feathers and grasshoppers and cloud shadows, all unconscious that
+any eyes but their mother's saw or cared for their wild, free playing.
+
+[Illustration: "Watching her growing youngsters"]
+
+Something bothered the old she-wolf in these days of watching. The den
+was still secure, for no human foot had crossed the deep ravine or
+ventured nearer than the opposite hilltop. Her nose told her that
+unmistakably; but still she was uneasy, and whenever the cubs were
+playing she felt, without knowing why, that she was being watched. When
+she trailed over all the ridges in the twilight, seeking to know if
+enemies had been near, she found always the scent of two human beings on
+a flat rock under the dwarf spruces; and there were always the two
+trails coming up and going down the brook. She followed once close
+behind the two children, seeing them plainly all the way, till they came
+in sight of the little cabin under the cliff, and from the door her
+enemy man came out to meet them. For these two little ones, whose trail
+she knew, the old she-wolf, like most mother animals in the presence of
+children, felt no fear nor enmity whatever. But they watched her den and
+her own little ones, that was sure enough; and why should any one watch
+a den except to enter some time and destroy? That is a question which no
+mother wolf could ever answer; for the wild animals, unlike dogs and
+blue jays and men, mind strictly their own business and pay no attention
+to other animals. They hate also to be watched; for the thought of
+watching always suggests to their minds that which follows,--the hunt,
+the rush, the wild break-away, and the run for life. Had she not herself
+watched a hundred times at the rabbit's form, the fox's runway, the deer
+path, the wild-goose nest? What could she expect for her own little
+ones, therefore, when the man cubs, beings of larger reach and unknown
+power, came daily to watch at her den?
+
+All this unanswered puzzle must have passed through the old wolf's head
+as she trotted up the brook away from the Indian cabin in the twilight.
+When in doubt trust your fears,--that is wolf wisdom in a nutshell; and
+that marks the difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance,
+which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity. So the old wolf took
+counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them
+one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over
+rocks and ravines and spruce thickets, to another den where no human eye
+ever looked upon their play.
+
+"Shall we see them again, little brother?" said Mooka wistfully, when
+they had climbed to their watch-tower for the third time and seen
+nothing. And Noel made confident answer:
+
+"Oh, yes, we see um again, lil sister. Wayeeses got um wandering foot;
+go 'way off long ways; bimeby come back on same trail. He jus' like
+Injun, like um old camp best. Oh, yes, sartin we see um again." But
+Noel's eyes looked far away as he spoke, and in his heart he was
+thinking of his bow and his long arrow with the sharp point, and of a
+moonlit night with white shapes flitting noiselessly over the snow and
+scratching at the door of the little cabin.
+
+
+
+_The Way of The Wolf_
+
+A new experience had come to the little wolf cubs in a single
+night,--the experience of fear. For weeks they had lain hid in the dark
+den, or played fearlessly in the bright sunshine, guarded and kept at
+every moment, day or night, by the gaunt old mother wolf that was their
+only law, their only companion. At times they lay for hours hungry and
+restless, longing to go out into the bright world, yet obeying a
+stronger will than their own, even at a distance. For, once a wild
+mother in her own dumb way has bidden her little ones lie still, they
+rarely stir from the spot, refusing even to be dragged away from the
+nest or den, knowing well the punishment in store if she return and find
+them absent. Moreover, it is useless to dissimulate, to go out and play
+and then to be sleeping innocently with the cubs when the old wolf's
+shadow darkens the entrance. No concealment is possible from wolf's
+nose; before she enters the den the mother knows perfectly all that has
+happened since she went away. So the days glided by peacefully between
+sleep and play, the cubs trusting absolutely in the strength and
+tenderness that watched over them, the mother building the cubs' future
+on the foundation of the two instincts which are strong in every wild
+creature born into a world of danger,--the instinct to lie still and let
+nature's coloring hide all defenseless little ones, and the instinct to
+obey instantly a stronger will than their own.
+
+There was no fear as yet, only instinctive wariness; for fear comes
+largely from others' example, from alarms and excitement and cries of
+danger, which only the grown animals understand. The old wolf had been
+undisturbed; no dog or hunter had chased her; no trap or pitfall had
+entangled her swift feet. Moreover, she had chosen her den well, where
+no man had ever stood, and where only the eyes of two children had seen
+her at a distance. So the little ones grew and played in the sunshine,
+and had yet to learn what fear meant.
+
+One day at dusk the mother entered swiftly and, without giving them food
+as she had always done, seized a cub and disappeared. For the little
+one, which had never before ventured beyond sight of the den, it was a
+long journey indeed that followed,--miles and miles beside roaring
+brooks and mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light
+entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his
+ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother's great jaws. An
+owl hooted dismally, _whoo-hooo!_ and though he knew the sound well in
+his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver. The wind went
+sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird chirped
+and whirred away out of their path; the brook roared among the rocks; a
+big salmon jumped and tumbled back with resounding splash, and jumped
+again as if the otter were after him. There was a sudden sharp cry, the
+first and last voice of a hare when the weasel rises up in front of him;
+then silence, and the fitful rustle of his mother's pads moving
+steadily, swiftly over dry leaves. And all these sounds of the
+wilderness night spoke to the little cub of some new thing, of swift
+feet that follow and of something unknown and terrible that waits for
+all unwary wild things. So fear was born.
+
+The long journey ended at last before a dark hole in the hillside; and
+the smell of his mother, the only familiar thing in his first strange
+pilgrimage, greeted the cub from the rocks on either side as he passed
+in out of the starlight. He was dropped without a sound in a larger den,
+on some fresh-gathered leaves and dead grass, and lay there all alone,
+very still, with the new feeling trembling all over him. A long hour
+passed; a second cub was laid beside him, and the mother vanished as
+before; another hour, and the wolf cubs were all together again with the
+mother feeding them. Nor did any of them know where they were, nor why
+they had come, nor the long, long way that led back to where the trail
+began.
+
+Next day when they were called out to play they saw a different and more
+gloomy landscape, a chaos of granite rocks, a forest of evergreen, the
+white plunge and rolling mist of a mountain torrent; but no silver sea
+with fishing-boats drifting over it, like clouds in the sea over their
+heads, and no gray hut with children running about like ants on the
+distant shore. And as they played they began for the first time to
+imitate the old mother keeping guard over them, sitting up often to
+watch and listen and sift the winds, trying to understand what fear was,
+and why they had been taken away from the sunny hillside where the world
+was so much bigger and brighter than here. But home is where mother
+is,--that, fortunately, is also true of the little Wood Folk, who
+understand it in their own savage way for a season,--and in their wonder
+at their new surroundings the memory of the old home gradually faded
+away. They never knew with what endless care the new den had been
+chosen; how the mother, in the days when she knew she was watched, had
+searched it out and watched over it and put her nose to every ridge and
+ravine and brook-side, day after day, till she was sure that no foot
+save that of the wild things had touched the soil within miles of the
+place. They felt only a greater wildness, a deeper solitude; and they
+never forgot, though they were unmolested, the strange feeling that was
+born in them on that first terrifying night journey in their mother's
+jaws.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon the food that was brought home at dawn--the rabbit or grouse, or
+the bunch of rats hanging by their tails, with which the mother
+supplemented their midday drink of milk--became altogether too scant to
+satisfy their clamorous appetites; and in the bright afternoons and the
+long summer twilights the mother led them forth on short journeys to
+hunt for themselves. No big caribou or cunning fox cub, as one might
+suppose, but "rats and mice and such small deer" were the limit of the
+mother's ambition for her little ones. They began on stupid grubs that
+one could find asleep under stones and roots, and then on beetles that
+scrambled away briskly at the first alarm, and then, when the sunshine
+was brightest, on grasshoppers,--lively, wary fellows that zipped and
+buzzed away just when you were sure you had them, and that generally
+landed from an astounding jump facing in a different direction, like a
+flea, so as to be ready for your next move.
+
+It was astonishing how quickly the cubs learned that game is not to be
+picked up tamely, like huckleberries, and changed their style of
+hunting,--creeping, instead of trotting openly so that even a porcupine
+must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till
+the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on
+a ptarmigan. A wolf that cannot catch a grasshopper has no business
+hunting rabbits--this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led the
+old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was
+hiding plentifully and take her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the
+edge of the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted
+elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping
+up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or
+snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a
+back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their
+heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like
+exclamation points, to find another grasshopper.
+
+Small business indeed and often ludicrous, this playing at grasshopper
+hunting. So it seems to us; so also, perhaps, to the wise old mother,
+which knew all the ways of game, from crickets to caribou and from
+ground sparrows to wild geese. But play is the first great
+educator,--that is as true of animals as of men,--and to the cubs their
+rough helter-skelter after hoppers was as exciting as a stag hunt to the
+pack, as full of surprises as the wild chase through the soft snow after
+a litter of lynx kittens. And though they knew it not, they were
+learning things every hour of the sunny, playful afternoons that they
+would remember and find useful all the days of their life.
+
+So the funny little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a
+bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and
+inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed
+them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before
+chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting
+grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ever afterward. Even after they knew
+just where the grasshopper was hiding, watching them after a jump, and
+leaped upon him swiftly from a distance, he often got away when they
+lifted their paws to eat him. For the grasshopper was not dead under the
+light paw, as they supposed, but only pressed into the moss waiting for
+his chance to jump. Then the cubs learned another lesson: to hold their
+game down with both paws pressed closely together, inserting their noses
+like a wedge and keeping every crack of escape shut tight until they had
+the slippery morsel safe under their back teeth. And even then it was
+deliciously funny to watch their expression as they chewed, opening
+their jaws wide as if swallowing a rabbit, snapping them shut again as
+the grasshopper wiggled; and always with a doubt in their close-set
+eyes, a questioning twist of head and ears, as if they were not quite
+sure whether or not they were really eating him.
+
+Another suggestive thing came out in these hunts, which you must notice
+whether you watch wolves or coyotes or a den of fox cubs. Though no
+sound came from the watchful old mother, the cubs seemed at every
+instant under absolute control. One would rush away pell-mell after a
+hopper, miss him and tumble away again, till he was some distance from
+the busy group on the edge of the big lonely barren. In the midst of his
+chase the mother would raise her head and watch the cub intently. No
+sound was uttered that human ears could hear; but the chase ended right
+there, on the instant, and the cub came trotting back like a well-broken
+setter at the whistle. It was marvelous beyond comprehension, this
+absolute authority and this silent command that brought a wolf back
+instantly from the wildest chase, and that kept the cubs all together
+under the watchful eyes that followed every movement. No wonder wolves
+are intelligent in avoiding every trap and in hunting together to outwit
+some fleet-footed quarry with unbelievable cunning. Here on the edge of
+the vast, untrodden barren, far from human eyes, in an ordinary family
+of wolf cubs playing wild and free, eager, headstrong, hungry, yet
+always under control and instantly subject to a wiser head and a
+stronger will than their own, was the explanation of it all. Later, in
+the bitter, hungry winter, when a big caribou was afoot and the pack hot
+on his trail, the cubs would remember the lesson, and every free wolf
+would curb his hunger, obeying the silent signal to ease the game and
+follow slowly while the leader raced unseen through the woods to head
+the game and lie in ambush by the distant runway.
+
+From grasshoppers the cubs took to hunting the wood-mice that nested in
+the dry moss and swarmed on the edges of every thicket. This was keener
+hunting; for the wood-mouse moves like a ray of light, and always makes
+at least one false start to mislead any that may be watching for him.
+The cubs soon learned that when Tookhees appeared and dodged back again,
+as if frightened, it was not because he had seen them, but just because
+he always appears that way. So they crouched and hid, like a cat, and
+when a gray streak shot over the gray moss and vanished in a tuft of
+grass they leaped for the spot--and always found it vacant. For Tookhees
+always doubles on his trail, or burrows for a distance under the moss,
+and never hides where he disappears. It took the cubs a long while to
+find that out; and then they would creep and watch and listen till they
+could locate the game by a stir under the moss, and pounce upon it and
+nose it out from between their paws, just as they had done with the
+grasshoppers. And when they crunched it at last like a ripe plum under
+their teeth it was a delicious tidbit, worth all the trouble they had
+taken to get it. For your wolf, unlike the ferocious, grandmother-eating
+creature of the nursery, is at heart a peaceable fellow, most at home
+and most happy when mouse hunting.
+
+There was another kind of this mouse chasing which furnished better
+sport and more juicy mouthfuls to the young cubs. Here and there on the
+Newfoundland mountains the snow lingers all summer long. In every
+northern hollow of the hills you see, from a distance, white patches no
+bigger than your hat sparkling in the sun; but when you climb there,
+after bear or caribou, you find great snow-fields, acres in extent and
+from ten to a hundred feet deep, packed close and hard with the pressure
+of a thousand winters. Often when it rains in the valleys, and raises
+the salmon rivers to meet your expectations, a thin covering of new snow
+covers these white fields; and then, if you go there, you will find the
+new page written all over with the feet of birds and beasts. The mice
+especially love these snow-fields for some unknown reason. All along the
+edges you find the delicate, lacelike tracery which shows where little
+feet have gone on busy errands or played together in the moonlight; and
+if you watch there awhile you will surely see Tookhees come out of the
+moss and scamper across a bit of snow and dive back to cover under the
+moss again, as if he enjoyed the feeling of the cold snow under his feet
+in the summer sunshine. He has tunnels there, too, going down to solid
+ice, where he hides things to keep which would spoil if left in the heat
+of his den under the mossy stone, and when food is scarce he draws upon
+these cold-storage rooms; but most of his summer snow journeys, if one
+may judge from watching him and from following his tracks, are taken for
+play or comfort, just as the bull caribou comes up to lie in the snow,
+with the strong sea wind in his face, to escape the flies which swarm in
+the thickets below. Owl and hawk, fox and weasel and wildcat,--all the
+prowlers of the day and night have long since discovered these good
+hunting-grounds and leave the prints of wing and claw over the records
+of the wood-mice; but still Tookhees returns, led by his love of the
+snow-fields, and thrives and multiplies spite of all his enemies.
+
+One moonlit night the old wolf took her cubs to the edge of one of these
+snow-fields, where the eager eyes soon noticed dark streaks shooting
+hither and yon over the bare white surface. At first they chased them
+wildly; but one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, which has not so
+many places to hide as a wood-mouse. Then, remembering the grasshoppers,
+they crouched and crept and so caught a few. Meanwhile old mother wolf
+lay still in hiding, contenting herself with snapping up the game that
+came to her, instead of chasing it wildly all over the snow-field. The
+example was not lost; for imitation is strong among intelligent animals,
+and most of what they learn is due simply to following the mother. Soon
+the cubs were still, one lying here under shadow of a bush, another
+there by a gray rock that lifted its head out of the snow. As a dark
+streak moved nervously by one of these hiding-places there would be a
+rush, a snap, the _pchap pchap_ of jaws crunching a delicious morsel;
+then all quiet again, with only gray, innocent-looking shadows resting
+softly on the snow. So they moved gradually along the edges of the great
+white field; and next morning the tracks were all there, plain as
+daylight, telling their silent story of good hunting.
+
+To vary their diet the mother now took them down to the shore to hunt
+among the rocks for ducks' eggs. They were there by the hundreds,
+scattered along the lonely bays just above high-water line, where the
+eiders had their nests.
+
+At first old mother wolf showed them where to look, and when she had
+found a clutch of eggs would divide them fairly, keeping the hungry cubs
+in order at a little distance and bringing each one his share, which he
+ate without interference. Then when they understood the thing they
+scattered nimbly to hunt for themselves, and the real fun began.
+
+Now a cub, poking his nose industriously into every cranny and under
+every thick bush, would find a great roll of down plucked from the
+mother bird's breast, and scraping the top off carefully with his paw,
+would find five or six large pale-green eggs, which he gobbled down,
+shells, ducklings and all, before another cub should smell the good find
+and caper up to share it. Again he would be startled out of his wits as
+a large brown bird whirred and fluttered away from under his very nose.
+Sitting on his tail he would watch her with comical regret and longing
+till she tumbled into the tide and drifted swiftly away out of danger;
+then, remembering what he came for, he would turn and follow her trail
+back to the nest out of which she had stolen at his approach, and find
+the eggs all warm for his breakfast. And when he had eaten all he wanted
+he would take an egg in his mouth and run about uneasily here and there,
+like a dog with a bone when he thinks he is watched, till he had made a
+sad crisscross of his trail and found a spot where none could see him.
+There he would dig a hole and bury his egg and go back for more; and on
+his way would meet another cub running about with an egg in his mouth,
+looking for a spot where no one would notice him.
+
+From mice and eggs the young cubs turned to rabbits and hares; and these
+were their staple food ever afterward when other game was scarce and the
+wood-mice were hidden deep under the winter snows, safe at last for a
+little season from all their enemies. Here for the first time the father
+wolf appeared, coming in quietly one late afternoon, as if he knew, as
+he probably did, just when he was needed. Beyond a glance he paid no
+attention whatever to the cubs, only taking his place opposite the
+mother as the wolves started abreast in a long line to beat the thicket.
+
+By night the cubs had already caught several rabbits, snapping them up
+as they played heedlessly in the moonlight, just as they had done with
+the wood-mice. By day, however, the hunting was entirely different. Then
+the hares and rabbits are resting in their hidden forms under the ferns,
+or in a hollow between the roots of a brown stump. 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. If a cub succeeded, and snapped up a
+rabbit before the surprised creature had time to gather headway, he
+dropped behind with his catch, while the rest went slowly, carefully, on
+through the cover. If he failed, as was generally the case at first, a
+curious bit of wolf intelligence and wolf training came out at once.
+
+As the wolves advanced the father and mother would steal gradually ahead
+at either end of the line, rarely hunting themselves, but drawing the
+nearest cub's attention to any game they had discovered, and then moving
+silently to one side and a little ahead to watch the result. When the
+cub rushed and missed, and the startled rabbit went flying away,
+whirling to left or right as rabbits always do, there would be a
+lightning change at the end of the line. A terrific rush, a snap of the
+long jaws like a steel trap,--then the old wolf would toss back the
+rabbit with a broken back, for the cub to finish him. Not till the cubs
+first, and then the mother, had satisfied their hunger would the old
+he-wolf hunt for himself. Then he would disappear, and they would not
+see him for days at a time, until food was scarce and they needed him
+once more.
+
+One day, when the cubs were hungry and food scarce because of their
+persistent hunting near the den, the mother brought them to the edge of
+a dense thicket where rabbits were plentiful enough, but where the cover
+was so thick that they could not follow the frightened game for an
+instant. The old he-wolf had appeared at a distance and then vanished;
+and the cubs, trotting along behind the mother, knew nothing of what was
+coming or what was expected of them. They lay in hiding on the lee side
+of the thicket, each one crouching under a bush or root, with the mother
+off at one side perfectly hidden as usual.
+
+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. The cubs were filled with wonder. Such hunting was
+never seen before; for rabbits stirred abroad by day, and ran right into
+the hungry mouths instead of running away. Then, slinking along like a
+shadow and stopping to look back and sniff the wind, appeared a big red
+fox that had been sleeping away the afternoon on top of a stump in the
+center of the thicket.
+
+The old mother's eyes began to blaze as Eleemos drew near. There was a
+rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow
+as the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the
+fox turned to leap away. Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a
+flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had
+happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at
+his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling
+deep in their chests as the lust of their first fighting swept over
+them. Then in vague, vanishing glimpses the old he-wolf appeared,
+quartering swiftly, silently, back and forth through the thicket,
+driving every living thing down-wind to where the cubs and the mother
+were waiting to receive it.
+
+[Illustration: "As the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the
+back"]
+
+That one lesson was enough for the cubs, though years would pass before
+they could learn all the fine points of this beating the bush: to know
+almost at a glance where the game, whether grouse or hare or fox or
+lucivee, was hiding in the cover, and then for one wolf to drive it,
+slowly or swiftly as the case might require, while the other hid beside
+the most likely path of escape. A family of grouse must be coaxed along
+and never see what is driving them, else they will flit into a tree and
+be lost; while a cat must be startled out of her wits by a swift rush,
+and sent flying away before she can make up her stupid mind what the row
+is all about. A fox, almost as cunning as Wayeeses himself, must be made
+to think that some dog enemy is slowly puzzling out his cold trail;
+while a musquash searching for bake-apples, or a beaver going inland to
+cut wood for his winter supplies of bark, must not be driven, but be
+followed up swiftly by the path or canal by which he has ventured away
+from the friendly water.
+
+All these and many more things must be learned slowly at the expense of
+many failures, especially when the cubs took to hunting alone and the
+old wolves were not there to show them how; but they never forgot the
+principle taught in that first rabbit drive,--that two hunters are
+better than one to outwit any game when they hunt intelligently
+together. That is why you so often find wolves going in pairs; and when
+you study them or follow their tracks you discover that they play
+continually into each other's hands. They seem to share the spoil as
+intelligently as they catch it, the wolf that lies beside the runway and
+pulls down the game giving up a portion gladly to the companion that
+beats the bush, and rarely indeed is there any trace of quarreling
+between them.
+
+Like the eagles--which have long since learned the advantage of hunting
+in pairs and of scouting for game in single file--the wolves, when
+hunting deer on the open barrens where it is difficult to conceal their
+advance, always travel in files, one following close behind the other;
+so that, seen from in front where the game is watching, two or three
+wolves will appear like a lone animal trotting across the plain. That
+alarms the game far less at first; and not until the deer starts away
+does the second wolf appear, shooting out from behind the leader. The
+sight of another wolf appearing suddenly on his flank throws a young
+deer into a panic, in which he is apt to lose his head and be caught by
+the cunning hunters.
+
+Curiously enough, the plains Indians, who travel in the same way when
+hunting or scouting for enemies, first learned the trick--so an old
+chief told me, and it is one of the traditions of his people--from
+watching the timber wolves in their stealthy advance over the open
+places.
+
+The wolves were stealing through the woods all together, one late summer
+afternoon, having beaten a cover without taking anything, when the
+puzzled cubs suddenly found themselves alone. A moment before they had
+been trotting along with the old wolves, nosing every cranny and knot
+hole for mice and grubs, and stopping often for a roll and frolic, as
+young cubs do in the gladness of life; now they pressed close together,
+looking, listening, while a subtle excitement filled all the woods. For
+the old wolves had disappeared, shooting ahead in great, silent bounds,
+while the cubs waited with ears cocked and noses quivering, as if a
+silent command had been understood.
+
+The silence was intense; not a sound, not a stir in the quiet woods,
+which seemed to be listening with the cubs and to be filled with the
+same thrilling expectation. Suddenly the silence was broken by heavy
+plunges far ahead, _crash! bump! bump!_ and there broke forth such an
+uproar of yaps and howls as the cubs had never heard before. Instantly
+they broke away on the trail, joining their shrill yelpings to the
+clamor, so different from the ordinary stealthy wolf hunt, and filled
+with a nameless excitement which they did not at all understand till the
+reek of caribou poured into their hungry nostrils; whereupon they yelped
+louder than ever. But they did not begin to understand the matter till
+they caught glimpses of gray backs bounding hither and yon in the
+underbrush, while the two great wolves raced easily on either side,
+yapping sharply to increase the excitement, and guiding the startled,
+foolish deer as surely, as intelligently, as a pair of collies herd a
+flock of frightened sheep.
+
+When the cubs broke out of the dense cover at last they found the two
+old wolves sitting quietly on their tails before a rugged wall of rocks
+that stretched away on either hand at the base of a great bare hill. In
+front of them was a young cow caribou, threatening savagely with horns
+and hoofs, while behind her cowered two half-grown fawns crowded into a
+crevice of the rocks. Anger, rather than fear, blazed out in the
+mother's mild eyes. Now she turned swiftly to press her excited young
+ones back against the sheltering wall; now she whirled with a savage
+grunt and charged headlong at the wolves, which merely leaped aside and
+sat down silently again to watch the game, till the cubs raced out and
+hovered uneasily about with a thousand questions in every eye and ear
+and twitching nostril.
+
+The reason for the hunt was now plain enough. Up to this time the
+caribou had been let severely alone, though they were very numerous,
+scattered through the dense coverts in every valley and on every
+hillside. For Wayeeses is no wanton killer, as he is so often
+represented to be, but sticks to small game whenever he can find it, and
+leaves the deer unmolested. As for his motive in the matter, who shall
+say, since no one understands the half of what a wolf does every day?
+Perhaps it is a mere matter of taste, a preference for the smaller and
+more juicy tidbits; more likely it is a combination of instinct and
+judgment, with a possible outlook for the future unusual with beasts of
+prey. The moment the young wolves take to harrying the deer--as they
+invariably do if the mother wolf be not with them--the caribou leave the
+country. The herds become, moreover, so wild and suspicious after a very
+little wolf hunting that they are exceedingly difficult of approach; and
+there is no living thing on earth, not even a white wolf or a trained
+greyhound, that can tire or overtake a startled caribou. The swinging
+rack of these big white wanderers looks easy enough when you see it; but
+when the fleet staghounds are slipped, as has been more than once tested
+in Newfoundland, try as hard as they will they cannot keep within sight
+of the deer for a single quarter-mile, and no limit has ever yet been
+found, either by dog or wolf, to Megaleep's tirelessness. So the old
+wolves, relying possibly upon past experience, keep the cubs and hold
+themselves strictly to small game as long as it can possibly be found.
+Then when the bitter days of late winter come, with their scarcity of
+small game and their unbearable hunger, the wolves turn to the caribou
+as a last resort, killing a few here by stealth, rather than speed, and
+then, when the game grows wild, going far off to another range where the
+deer have not been disturbed and so can be approached more easily.
+
+On this afternoon, however, the old mother wolf had run plump upon the
+caribou and her fawns in the midst of a thicket, and had leaped forward
+promptly to round them up for her hungry cubs. It would have been the
+easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring one of the slow
+fawns, or the mother caribou herself as she hovered in the rear to
+defend her young; but there were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head
+that had seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the deer slowly,
+puzzling them more and more, as a collie distracts the herd by his
+yapping, out into the open where her cubs might join in the hunting.
+
+The wolves now drew back, all save the mother, which advanced
+hesitatingly to where the caribou stood with lowered head, watching
+every move. Suddenly the cow charged, so swiftly, furiously, that the
+old wolf seemed almost caught, and tumbled away with the broad hoofs
+striking savagely at her flanks. Farther and farther the caribou drove
+her enemy, roused now to frenzy at the wolf's nearness and apparent
+cowardice. Then she whirled in a panic and rushed back to her little
+ones, only to find that all the other wolves, as if frightened by her
+furious charge, had drawn farther back from the cranny in the rocks.
+
+Again the old she-wolf approached cautiously, and again the caribou
+plunged at her and followed her lame retreat with headlong fury. An
+electric shock seemed suddenly to touch the huge he-wolf. Like a flash
+he leaped in on the fawns. One quick snap of the long jaws with the
+terrible fangs; then, as if the whole thing were a bit of play, he loped
+away easily with the cubs, circling to join the mother wolf, which
+strangely enough did not return to the attack as the caribou charged
+back, driving the cubs and the old he-wolf away like a flock of sheep.
+The coast was now clear, not an enemy in the way; and the mother
+caribou, with a triumphant bleat to her fawns to follow, plunged back
+into the woods whence she had come.
+
+One fawn only followed her. The other took a step or two, sank to his
+knees, and rolled over on his side. When the wolves drew near quietly,
+without a trace of the ferocity or the howling clamor with which such
+scenes are usually pictured, the game was quite dead, one quick snap of
+the old wolf's teeth just behind the fore legs having pierced the heart
+more surely than a hunter's bullet. And the mother caribou, plunging
+wildly away through the brush with the startled fawn jumping at her
+heels, could not know that her mad flight was needless; that the
+terrible enemy which had spared her and let her go free had no need nor
+desire to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fat autumn had now come with its abundant fare, and the caribou were
+not again molested. Flocks of grouse and ptarmigan came out of the thick
+coverts, in which they had been hiding all summer, and began to pluck
+the berries of the open plains, where they could easily be waylaid and
+caught by the growing wolf cubs. Plover came in hordes, sweeping over
+the Straits from the Labrador; and when the wolves surrounded a flock of
+the queer birds and hitched nearer and nearer, sinking their gray bodies
+in the yielding gray moss till they looked like weather-worn logs, the
+hunting was full of tense excitement, though the juicy mouthfuls were
+few and far between. Fox cubs roamed abroad away from their mothers,
+self-willed and reveling in the abundance; and it was now easy for two
+of the young wolves to drive a fox out of his daytime cover and catch
+him as he stole away.
+
+After the plover came the ducks in myriads, filling the ponds and
+flashets of the vast barrens with tumultuous quacking; and the young
+wolves learned, like the foxes, to decoy the silly birds by rousing
+their curiosity. They would hide in the grass, while one played and
+rolled about on the open shore, till the ducks saw him and began to
+stretch their necks and gabble their amazement at the strange thing,
+which they had never seen before. Shy and wild as he naturally is, a
+duck, like a caribou or a turkey, must take a peek at every new thing.
+Now silent, now gabbling all together, the flock would veer and scatter
+and draw together again, and finally swing in toward the shore, every
+neck drawn straight as a string the better to see what was going on.
+Nearer and nearer they would come, till a swift rush out of the grass
+sent them off headlong, splashing and quacking with crazy clamor. But
+one or two always stayed behind with the wolves to pay the price of
+curiosity.
+
+Then there were the young geese, which gathered in immense flocks in the
+shallow bays, preparing and drilling for the autumn flight. Late in the
+afternoon the old mother wolf with her cubs would steal down through the
+woods, hiding and watching the flocks, and following them stealthily as
+they moved along the shore. At night the great flock would approach a
+sandbar, well out of the way of rocks and brush and everything that
+might hide an enemy, and go to sleep in close little family groups on
+the open shore. As the night darkened four shadows would lengthen out
+from the nearest bank of shadows, creeping onward to the sand-bar with
+the slow patience of the hours. A rush, a startled _honk!_ a terrific
+clamor of wings and throats and smitten water. Then the four shadows
+would rise up from the sand and trot back to the woods, each with a
+burden on its shoulders and a sparkle in the close-set eyes over the
+pointed jaws, which were closed on the neck of a goose, holding it tight
+lest any outcry escape to tell the startled flock what had happened.
+
+Besides this abundant game there were other good things to eat, and the
+cubs rarely dined of the same dish twice in succession. Salmon and big
+sea-trout swarmed now in every shallow of the clear brooks, and, after
+spawning, these fish were much weakened and could easily be caught by a
+little cunning. Every day and night the tide ebbed and flowed, and every
+tide left its contribution in windrows of dead herring and caplin, with
+scattered crabs and mussels for a relish, like plums in a pudding. A
+wolf had only to trot for a mile or two along the tide line of a lonely
+beach, picking up the good things which the sea had brought him, and
+then go back to sleep or play satisfied. And if Wayeeses wanted game to
+try his mettle and cunning, there were the big fat seals barking on the
+black rocks, and he had only to cut between them and the sea and throw
+himself upon the largest seal as the herd floundered ponderously back to
+safety. A wolf rarely grips and holds an enemy; he snaps and lets go,
+and snaps again at every swift chance; but here he must either hold fast
+or lose his big game; and what between holding and letting go, as the
+seals whirled with bared teeth and snapped viciously in turn, as they
+scrambled away to the sea, the wolves had a lively time of it. Often
+indeed, spite of three or four wolves, a big seal would tumble into the
+tide, where the sharks followed his bloody trail and soon finished him.
+
+Now for the first time the wolves, led by the rich abundance, began to
+kill more than they needed for food and to hide it away, like the
+squirrels, in anticipation of the coming winter. Like the blue and the
+Arctic foxes, a strange instinct to store things seems to stir dimly at
+times within them. Occasionally, instead of eating and sleeping after a
+kill, the cubs, led by the mother wolf, would hunt half of the day and
+night and carry all they caught to the snow-fields. There each one would
+search out a cranny in the rocks and hide his game, covering it over
+deeply with snow to kill the scent of it from the prowling foxes. Then
+for days at a time they would forget the coming winter, and play as
+heedlessly as if the woods would always be as full of game as now; and
+again the mood would be upon them strongly, and they would kill all they
+could find and hide it in another place. But the instinct--if indeed it
+were instinct, and not the natural result of the mother's own
+experience--was weak at best; and the first time the cubs were hungry or
+lazy they would trail off to the hidden store. Long before the spring
+with its bitter need was upon them they had eaten everything, and had
+returned to the empty storehouse at least a dozen times, as a dog goes
+again and again to the place where he once hid a bone, and nosed it all
+over regretfully to be quite sure that they had overlooked nothing.
+
+More interesting to the wolves in these glad days than the game or the
+storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on
+the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,--splendid old stags with
+massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the
+sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far
+than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they
+crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets,
+sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, endless lines
+converging upon the vast open barrens where the caribou gathered to
+select their mates for another year. Where they all came from was a
+mystery that filled the cubs' heads with constant wonder. During the
+summer you see little of them,--here a cow with her fawn hiding deep in
+the cover, there a big stag standing out like a watchman on the mountain
+top; but when the early autumn comes they are everywhere, crossing
+rivers and lakes at regular points, and following deep paths which their
+ancestors have followed for countless generations.
+
+The cows and fawns seemed gentle and harmless enough, though their very
+numbers filled the young wolves with a certain awe. After their first
+lesson it would have been easy enough for the cubs to have killed all
+they wanted and to grow fat and lazy as the bears, which were now
+stuffing themselves before going off to sleep for the winter; but the
+old mother wolf held them firmly in check, for with plenty of small game
+everywhere, all wolves are minded to go quietly about their own business
+and let the caribou follow their own ways. When October came it brought
+the big stags into the open,--splendid, imposing beasts, with swollen
+necks and fierce red eyes and long white manes tossing in the wind. Then
+the wolves had to stand aside; for the stags roamed over all the land,
+pawing the moss in fury, bellowing their hoarse challenge, and charging
+like a whirlwind upon every living thing that crossed their paths.
+
+When the mother wolf, with her cubs at heel, saw one of these big furies
+at a distance she would circle prudently to avoid him. Again, as the
+cubs hunted rabbits, they would hear a crash of brush and a furious
+challenge as some quarrelsome stag winded them; and the mother with her
+cubs gathered close about her would watch alertly for his headlong rush.
+As he charged out the wolves would scatter and leap nimbly aside, then
+sit down on their tails in a solemn circle and watch as if studying the
+strange beast. Again and again he would rush upon them, only to find
+that he was fighting the wind. Mad as a hornet, he would single out a
+cub and follow him headlong through brush and brake till some subtle
+warning thrilled through his madness, telling him to heed his flank;
+then as he whirled he would find the savage old mother close at his
+heels, her white fangs bared and a dangerous flash in her eyes as she
+saw the hamstring so near, so easy to reach. One spring and a snap, and
+the ramping, masterful stag would have been helpless as a rabbit, his
+tendons cut cleanly at the hock; another snap and he must come down,
+spite of his great power, and be food for the growing cubs that sat on
+their tails watching him, unterrified now by his fierce challenge. But
+Megaleep's time had not yet come; besides, he was too tough. So the
+wolves studied him awhile, amused perhaps at the rough play; then, as if
+at a silent command, they vanished like shadows into the nearest cover,
+leaving the big stag in his rage to think himself master of all the
+world.
+
+Sometimes as the old he-wolf ranged alone, a silent, powerful,
+noble-looking brute, he would meet the caribou, and there would be a
+fascinating bit of animal play. He rarely turned aside, knowing his own
+power, and the cows and fawns after one look would bound aside and rack
+away at a marvelous pace over the barrens. In a moment or two, finding
+that they were not molested, they would turn and watch the wolf
+curiously till he disappeared, trying perhaps to puzzle it out why the
+ferocious enemy of the deep snows and the bitter cold should now be
+harmless as the passing birds.
+
+Again a young bull with his keen, polished spike-horns, more active and
+dangerous but less confident than the over-antlered stags, would stand
+in the old wolf's path, disputing with lowered front the right of way.
+Here the right of way meant a good deal, for in many places on the high
+plains the scrub spruces grow so thickly that a man can easily walk over
+the tops of them on his snow-shoes, and the only possible passage in
+summer-time is by means of the numerous paths worn through the scrub by
+the passing of animals for untold ages. So one or the other of the two
+splendid brutes that now approached each other in the narrow way must
+turn aside or be beaten down underfoot.
+
+Quietly, steadily, the old wolf would come on till almost within
+springing distance, when he would stop and lift his great head,
+wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning
+deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he
+would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle
+nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take
+his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along
+the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; while the young bull
+would stand wondering, his body hidden in the scrub and his head thrust
+into the narrow path to look after his strange adversary.
+
+Another time, as the old wolf ranged along the edges of the barrens
+where the caribou herds were gathering, he would hear the challenge of a
+huge stag and the warning crack of twigs and the thunder of hoofs as the
+brute charged. Still the wolf trotted quietly along, watching from the
+corners of his eyes till the stag was upon him, when he sprang lightly
+aside and let the rush go harmlessly by. Sitting on his tail he would
+watch the caribou closely--and who could tell what was passing behind
+those cunning eyes that glowed steadily like coals, unruffled as yet by
+the passing winds, but ready at a rough breath to break out in flames of
+fire? Again and again the stag would charge, growing more furious at
+every failure; and every time the wolf leaped aside he left a terrible
+gash in his enemy's neck or side, punishing him cruelly for his bullying
+attack, yet strangely refusing to kill, as he might have done, or to
+close on the hamstring with one swift snap that would have put the big
+brute out of the fight forever. At last, knowing perhaps from past
+experience the uselessness of punishing or of disputing with this madman
+that felt no wounds in his rage, the wolf would lope away to cover,
+followed by a victorious bugle-cry that rang over the wide barren and
+echoed back from the mountain side. Then the wolf would circle back
+stealthily and put his nose down into the stag's hoof-marks for a long,
+deep sniff, and go quietly on his way again. A wolf's nose never
+forgets. When he finds that trail wandering with a score of others over
+the snow, in the bitter days to come when the pack are starving,
+Wayeeses will know whom he is following.
+
+Besides the caribou there were other things to rouse the cubs' curiosity
+and give them something pleasant to do besides eating and sleeping. When
+the hunter's moon rose full and clear over the woods, filling all
+animals with strange unrest, the pack would circle the great harbor,
+trotting silently along, nose to tail in single file, keeping on the
+high ridge of mountains and looking like a distant train of husky dogs
+against the moonlight. When over the fishing village they would sit
+down, each one on the loftiest rock he could find, raise their muzzles
+to the stars, and join in the long howl, _Ooooooo-wow-ow-ow!_ a
+terrible, wailing cry that seemed to drive every dog within hearing
+stark crazy. Out of the village lanes far below they rushed headlong,
+and sitting on the beach in a wide circle, heads all in and tails out,
+they raised their noses to the distant, wolf-topped pinnacles and joined
+in the wailing answer. Then the wolves would sit very still, listening
+with cocked ears to the cry of their captive kinsmen, till the dismal
+howling died away into silence, when they would start the clamor into
+life again by giving the wolf's challenge.
+
+Why they did it, what they felt there in the strange unreality of the
+moonlight, and what hushed their profound enmity, none can tell.
+Ordinarily the wolf hates both fox and dog, and kills them whenever they
+cross his path; but to-night the foxes were yapping an answer all around
+them, and sometimes a few adventurous dogs would scale the mountains
+silently to sit on the rocks and join in the wild wolf chorus, and not a
+wolf stirred to molest them. All were more or less lunatic, and knew not
+what they were doing.
+
+For hours the uncanny comedy would drag itself on into the tense
+midnight silence, the wailing cry growing more demented and heartrending
+as the spell of ancient days fell again upon the degenerate huskies. Up
+on the lonely mountain tops the moon looked down, still and cold, and
+saw upon every pinnacle a dog or a wolf, each with his head turned up at
+the sky, howling his heart out. Down in the hamlet, scattered for miles
+along Deep Arm and the harbor shore, sleepers stirred uneasily at the
+clamor, the women clutching their babies close, the men cursing the
+crazy brutes and vowing all sorts of vengeance on the morrow. Then the
+wolves would slip away like shadows into the vast upland barrens, and
+the dogs, restless as witches with some unknown excitement, would run
+back to whine and scratch at the doors of their masters' cabins.
+
+Soon the big snowflakes were whirling in the air, busily weaving a soft
+white winding-sheet for the autumn which was passing away. And truly it
+had been a good time for the wolf cubs, as for most wild animals; and
+they had grown large and strong with their fat feeding, and wise with
+their many experiences. The ducks and geese vanished, driving southward
+ahead of the fierce autumn gales, and only the late broods of hardy
+eiders were left for a little season. Herring and caplin had long since
+drifted away into unknown depths, where the tides flowed endlessly over
+them and brought never a one ashore. Hares and ptarmigans turned white
+to hide on the snow, so that wolf and fox would pass close by without
+seeing them. Wood-mice pushed their winding tunnels and made their
+vaulted play rooms deep under the drifts, where none might molest nor
+make them afraid; and all game grew wary and wild, learning from
+experience, as it always does, that only the keen can survive the fall
+hunting. So the long winter, with its snow and ice and its bitter cold
+and its grim threat of famine, settled heavily over Harbor Weal and the
+Long Range where Wayeeses must find his living.
+
+
+
+_The White Wolf's Hunting_
+
+Threatening as the northern winter was, with its stern order to the
+birds to depart, and to the beasts to put on their thick furs, and to
+the little folk of the snow to hide themselves in white coats, and to
+all living things to watch well the ways that they took, it could bring
+no terror to Wayeeses and her powerful young cubs. The gladness of life
+was upon them, with none of its pains or anxieties or fears, as we know
+them; and they rolled and tumbled about in the first deep snow with the
+abandon of young foxes, filled with wonder at the strange blanket that
+covered the rough places of earth so softly and made their light
+footsteps more noiseless than before. For to be noiseless and
+inconspicuous, and so in harmony with his surroundings, is the first
+desire of every creature of the vast solitudes.
+
+Meeting the wolves now, as they roamed wild and free over the great
+range, one would hardly have recognized the little brown creatures that
+he saw playing about the den where the trail began. The cubs were
+already noble-looking brutes, larger than the largest husky dog; and the
+parents were taller, with longer legs and more massive heads and
+powerful jaws, than any great timber-wolf. A tremendous vitality
+thrilled in them from nose to paw tips. Their great bodies, as they lay
+quiet in the snow with heads raised and hind legs bent under them, were
+like powerful engines, tranquil under enormous pressure; and when they
+rose the movement was like the quick snap of a steel spring. Indeed,
+half the ordinary movements of Wayeeses are so quick that the eye cannot
+follow them. One instant a wolf would be lying flat on his side, his
+long legs outstretched on the moss, his eyes closed in the sleepy
+sunshine, his body limp as a hound's after a fox chase; the next
+instant, like the click and blink of a camera shutter, he would be
+standing alert on all four feet, questioning the passing breeze or
+looking intently into your eyes; and you could not imagine, much less
+follow, the recoil of twenty big electric muscles that at some subtle
+warning had snapped him automatically from one position to the other.
+They were all snow-white, with long thick hair and a heavy mane that
+added enormously to their imposing appearance; and they carried their
+bushy tails almost straight out as they trotted along, with a slight
+crook near the body,--the true wolf sign that still reappears in many
+collies to tell a degenerate race of a noble ancestry.
+
+After the first deep snows the family separated, led by their growing
+hunger and by the difficulty of finding enough game in one cover to
+supply all their needs. The mother and the smallest cub remained
+together; the two larger cubs ranged on the other side of the mountain,
+beating the bush and hunting into each other's mouth, as they had been
+trained to do; while the big he-wolf hunted successfully by himself, as
+he had done for years. Scattered as they were, they still kept track of
+each other faithfully, and in a casual way looked after one another's
+needs. Wherever he was, a wolf seemed to know by instinct where his
+fellows were hunting many miles away. When in doubt he had only to mount
+the highest hill and give the rallying cry, which carried an enormous
+distance in the still cold air, to bring the pack swiftly and silently
+about him.
+
+At times, when the cubs were hungry after a two-days fast, they would
+hear, faint and far away, the food cry, _yap-yap-yooo! yap-yap-yoooooo!_
+quivering under the stars in the tense early-morning air, and would dart
+away to find game freshly killed by one of the old wolves awaiting them.
+Again, at nightfall, a cub's hunting cry, _ooooo, ow-ow! ooooo, ow-ow!_
+a deep, almost musical hoot with two short barks at the end, would come
+singing down from the uplands; and the wolves, leaving instantly the
+game they were following, would hasten up to find the two cubs herding a
+caribou in a cleft of the rocks,--a young caribou that had lost his
+mother at the hands of the hunters, and that did not know how to take
+care of himself. And one of the cubs would hold him there, sitting on
+his tail in front of the caribou to prevent his escape, while the other
+cub called the wolves away from their own hunting to come and join the
+feast.
+
+Whether this were a conscious attempt to spare the game, or to alarm it
+as little as need be, it is impossible to say. Certainly the wolves
+know, better apparently than men, that persistent hunting destroys its
+own object, and that caribou especially, when much alarmed by dogs or
+wolves or men, will take the alarm quickly, and the scattered herds,
+moved by a common impulse of danger, will trail far away to other
+ranges. That is why the wolf, unlike the less intelligent dog, hunts
+always in a silent, stealthy, unobtrusive way; and why he stops hunting
+and goes away the instant his own hunger is satisfied or another wolf
+kills enough for all. And that is also the probable reason why he lets
+the deer alone as long as he can find any other game.
+
+This same intelligent provision was shown in another curious way. When a
+wolf in his wide ranging found a good hunting-ground where small game
+was plentiful, he would snap up a rabbit silently in the twilight and
+then go far away, perhaps to join the other cubs in a gambol, or to
+follow them to the cliffs over a fishing village and set all the dogs to
+howling. By day he would lie close in some thick cover, miles away from
+his hunting-ground. At twilight he would steal back and hunt quietly,
+just long enough to get his game, and then trot away again, leaving the
+cover as unharried as if there were not a wolf in the whole
+neighborhood.
+
+Such a good hunting-ground cannot long remain hidden from other prowlers
+in the wilderness; and Wayeeses, who was keeping his discovery to
+himself, would soon cross the trail of a certain old fox returning day
+after day to the same good covers. No two foxes, nor mice, nor men, nor
+any other two animals for that matter, ever leave the same scent,--any
+old hound, which will hold steadily to one fox though a dozen others
+cross or cover his trail, will show you that plainly in a day's
+hunting,--and the wolf would soon know surely that the same fox was
+poaching every night on his own preserves while he was away. To a
+casual, wandering hunter he paid no attention; but this cunning poacher
+must be laid by the heels, else there would not be a single rabbit left
+in the cover. So Wayeeses, instead of hunting himself at twilight when
+the rabbits are stirring, would wait till midday, when the sun is warm
+and foxes are sleepy, and then come back to find the poacher's trail and
+follow it to where Eleemos was resting for the day in a sunny opening in
+the scrub. There Wayeeses would steal upon him from behind and put an
+end to his poaching; or else, if the fox used the same nest daily, as is
+often the case when he is not disturbed, the wolf would circle the scrub
+warily to find the path by which Eleemos usually came out on his night's
+hunting. When he found that out Wayeeses would dart away in the long,
+rolling gallop that carries a wolf swiftly over the roughest country
+without fatigue. In an hour or two he would be back again with another
+wolf. Then Eleemos, dozing away in the winter sunshine, would hear an
+unusual racket in the scrub behind him,--some heavy animal brushing
+about heedlessly and sniffing loudly at a cold trail. No wolf certainly,
+for a wolf makes no noise. So Eleemos would get down from his warm rock
+and slip away, stopping to look back and listen jauntily to the clumsy
+brute behind him, till he ran plump into the jaws of the other wolf that
+was watching alert and silent beside the runway.
+
+When the snows were deep and soft the wolves took to hunting the
+lynxes,--big, savage, long-clawed fighters that swarm in the interior of
+Newfoundland and play havoc with the small game. For a single lynx the
+wolves hunted in pairs, trailing the big prowler stealthily and rushing
+upon him from behind with a fierce uproar to startle the wits out of his
+stupid head and send him off headlong, as cats go, before he knew what
+was after him. Away he would go in mighty jumps, sinking shoulder deep,
+often indeed up to his tufted ears, at every plunge. After him raced the
+wolves, running lightly and taking advantage of the holes he had made in
+the soft snow, till a swift snap in his flank brought Upweekis up with a
+ferocious snarl to tear in pieces his pursuers.
+
+Then began as savage a bit of fighting as the woods ever witness, teeth
+against talons, wolf cunning against cat ferocity. Crouched in the snow,
+spitting and snarling, his teeth bared and round eyes blazing and long
+claws aching to close in a death grip, Upweekis waited impatient as a
+fury for the rush. He is an ugly fighter; but he must always get close,
+gripping his enemy with teeth and fore claws while the hind claws get in
+their deadly work, kicking downward in powerful spasmodic blows and
+ripping everything before them. A dog would rush in now and be torn to
+pieces; but not so the wolves. Dancing lightly about the big lynx they
+would watch their chance to leap and snap, sometimes avoiding the blow
+of the swift paw with its terrible claws, and sometimes catching it on
+their heavy manes; but always a long red mark showed on the lynx's
+silver fur as the wolves' teeth clicked with the voice of a steel trap
+and they leaped aside without serious injury. As the big cat grew blind
+in his fury they would seize their chance like a flash and leap
+together; one pair of long jaws would close hard on the spine behind the
+tufted ears; another pair would grip a hind leg, while the wolves sprang
+apart and braced to hold. Then the fight was all over; and the moose
+birds, in pairs, came flitting in silently to see if there were not a
+few unconsidered trifles of the feast for them to dispose of.
+
+Occasionally, at nightfall, the wolves' hunting cry would ring out of
+the woods as one of the cubs discovered three or four of the lynxes
+growling horribly over some game they had pulled down together. 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. No young wolf would ever run into one of these bands
+alone; but when the pack rolled in upon them like a tempest the lynxes
+would leap squalling away in a blind rush; and the two big wolves,
+cutting in from the ends of the charging line, would turn a lynx kit
+deftly aside for the cubs to hold. Then another for themselves, and the
+hunt was over,--all but the feast at the end of it.
+
+When a big and cunning lynx took to a tree at the first alarm the wolves
+would go aside to leeward, where Upweekis could not see them, but where
+their noses told them perfectly all that he was doing. Then began the
+long game of patience, the wolves waiting for the game to come down, and
+the lynx waiting for the wolves to go away. Upweekis was at a
+disadvantage, for he could not see when he had won; and he generally
+came down in an hour or two, only to find the wolves hot on his trail
+before he had taken a dozen jumps. Whereupon he took to another tree and
+the game began again.
+
+[Illustration: "The silent, appalling death-watch began."]
+
+When the night was exceeding cold--and one who has not felt it can
+hardly imagine the bitter, killing intensity of a northern midnight in
+February--the wolves, instead of going away, would wait under the tree
+in which the lynx had taken refuge, and the silent, appalling
+death-watch began. A lynx, though heavily furred, cannot long remain
+exposed in the intense cold without moving. Moreover he must grip the
+branch on which he sits more or less firmly with his claws, to keep from
+falling; and the tense muscles, which flex the long claws to drive them
+into the wood, soon grow weary and numb in the bitter frost. The wolves
+meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot
+slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to
+keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on
+any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves' jaws; or else,
+knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest wolf and dies fighting.
+
+Spite of the killing cold, the problem of keeping warm was to the wolves
+always a simple one. Moving along through the winter night, always on a
+swift, silent trot, they picked up what game came in their way, and
+scarcely felt the eager cold that nipped at their ears, or the wind,
+keen as an icicle, that strove to penetrate the shaggy white coats that
+covered them. When their hunger was satisfied, or when the late day came
+and found them still hunting hopefully, they would push their way into
+the thick scrub from one of the numerous paths and lie down on a nest of
+leaves, which even in midwinter were dry as if no snow or rain had ever
+fallen. There, where no wind or gale however strong could penetrate, and
+with the snow filling the low branches overhead and piled over them in a
+soft, warm blanket three feet thick, they would push their sensitive
+noses into their own thick fur to keep them warm, and sleep comfortably
+till the early twilight came and called them out again to the hunting.
+
+At times, when not near the scrub, they would burrow deep into a great
+drift of snow and sleep in the warmest kind of a nest,--a trick that the
+husky dogs, which are but wolves of yesterday, still remember. Like all
+wild animals, they felt the coming of a storm long before the first
+white flakes began to whirl in the air; and when a great storm
+threatened they would lie down to sleep in a cave, or a cranny of the
+rocks, and let the drifts pile soft and warm over them. However long the
+storm, they never stirred abroad; partly for their own comfort, partly
+because all game lies hid at such times and it is practically
+impossible, even for a wolf, to find it. When a wolf has fed full he can
+go a week without eating and suffer no great discomfort. So Wayeeses
+would lie close and warm while the snow piled deep around him and the
+gale raged over the sea and mountains, but passed unfelt and unheeded
+over his head. Then, when the storm was over, he pawed his way up
+through the drift and came out in a new, bright world, where the game,
+with appetites sharpened by the long fast, was already stirring briskly
+in every covert.
+
+When March came, the bitterest month of all for the Wood Folk, even
+Wayeeses was often hard pressed to find a living. Small game grew scarce
+and very wild; the caribou had wandered far away to other ranges; and
+the cubs would dig for hours after a mouse, or stalk a snowbird, or wait
+with endless patience for a red squirrel to stop his chatter and come
+down to search under the snow for a fir cone that he had hidden there in
+the good autumn days. And once, when the hunger within was more nipping
+than the eager cold without, one of the cubs found a bear sleeping in
+his winter den among the rocks. With a sharp hunting cry, that sang like
+a bullet over the frozen wastes, he called the whole pack about him.
+While the rest lay in hiding the old he-wolf approached warily and
+scratched Mooween out of his den, and then ran away to entice the big
+brute into the open ground, where the pack rolled in upon him and killed
+him in a terrible fight before he had fairly shaken the sleep out of his
+eyes.
+
+Old Tomah, the trapper, was abroad now, taking advantage of the spring
+hunger. The wolves often crossed his snow-shoe trail, or followed it
+swiftly to see whither it led. For a wolf, like a farm dog, is never
+satisfied till he knows the ways of every living thing that crosses his
+range. Following the broad trail Wayeeses would find here a trapped
+animal, struggling desperately with the clog and the cruel gripping
+teeth, there the flayed carcass of a lynx or an otter, and yonder the
+leg of a dog or a piece of caribou meat hung by a cord over a runway,
+with the snow disturbed beneath it where the deadly trap was hidden. One
+glance, or a sniff at a distance, was enough for the wolf. Lynxes do not
+go about the range without their skins, and meat does not naturally hang
+on trees; so Wayeeses, knowing all the ways of the woods, would ignore
+these baits absolutely. Nevertheless he followed the snow-shoe trails
+until he knew where every unnatural thing lay hidden; and no matter how
+hungry he was, or how cunningly the old Indian hid his devices, or
+however deep the new snow covered all traces of man's work, Wayeeses
+passed by on the other side and kept his dainty feet out of every snare
+and pitfall.
+
+Once, when the two cubs that hunted together were hard pinched with
+hunger, they found Old Tomah in the twilight and followed him
+stealthily. The old Indian was swinging along, silent as a shadow of the
+woods, his gun on his shoulder and some skins on his back, heading
+swiftly for the little hut under the cliff, where he burrowed for the
+night as snug as a bear in his den. An old wolf would have known
+instantly the danger, for man alone bites at a distance; but the
+lop-eared cub, which was larger than his brother and therefore the
+leader, raised his head for the hunting cry. The first yap had hardly
+left his throat when the thunder roared, and something seared the wolf's
+side like a hot iron. The cubs vanished like the smoke from the old gun.
+Then the Indian came swiftly back on the trail, peering about with hawk
+eyes to see the effect of his shot.
+
+"By cosh! miss um dat time. Mus' be powder no good." Then, as he read
+the plain record in the snow, "One,--by cosh! two hwulf, lil fool hwulf,
+follow my footin'. Mus' be more, come soon pretty quick now; else he
+don' howl dat way. Guess mebbe ol' Injun better stay in house nights."
+And he trailed warily back to hide himself behind a rock and watch till
+dark in front of his little _commoosie_.
+
+Old Tomah's sleep was sound as usual that night; so he could not see the
+five shadows that stole out of the woods, nor hear the light footfalls
+that circled his camp, nor feel the breath, soft as an eddy of wind in a
+spruce top, that whiffed at the crack under his door and drifted away
+again. Next morning he saw the tracks and understood them; and as he
+trailed away through the still woods he was wondering, in his silent
+Indian way, why an old wolf should always bring Malsunsis, the cub, for
+a good look and a sniff at anything that he is to avoid ever after.
+
+When all else fails follow the caribou,--that is the law which governs
+the wolf in the hungry days; but before they crossed the mountains and
+followed the long valleys to the far southern ranges the wolves went
+back to the hills, where the trail began, for a more exciting and
+dangerous kind of hunting. The pack had held closer together of late;
+for the old wolves must often share even a scant fox or rabbit with the
+hungry and inexperienced youngsters. Now, when famine drove them to the
+very doors of the one enemy to be feared, only the wisest and wariest
+old wolf was fit to lead the foray.
+
+The little fishing village was buried under drifts and almost deserted.
+A few men lingered to watch the boats and houses; but the families had
+all gone inland to the winter tilts for wood and shelter. By night the
+wolves would come stealthily to prowl among the deserted lanes; and the
+fishermen, asleep in their clothes under caribou skins, or sitting close
+by the stove behind barred doors, would know nothing of the huge, gaunt
+forms that flitted noiselessly past the frosted windows. If a pig were
+left in his pen a sudden terrible squealing would break out on the still
+night; and when the fisherman rushed out the pen would be empty, with
+nothing whatever to account for piggie's disappearance. For to their
+untrained eyes even the tracks of the wolves were covered up by those of
+the numerous big huskies. If a cat prowled abroad, or an uneasy dog
+scratched to be let out, there would be a squall, a yelp,--and the cat
+would not come back, and the dog would never scratch at the door to be
+let in again.
+
+Only when nothing stirred in the village, when the dogs and cats had
+been spirited away, and when not even a rat stole from under the houses
+to gnaw at a fishbone, would the fishermen know of their big silent
+visitors. Then the wolves would gather on a snow-drift just outside the
+village and raise a howl, a frightful wail of famine and disappointment,
+that made the air shudder. From within the houses the dogs answered with
+mad clamor. A door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a
+fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and
+capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as
+a bowstring; a sudden yelp--_Hui-hui_, as the fisherman whistled to the
+dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat
+that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in
+vain, and shiver, and go back to the fire again.
+
+Almost every pleasant day a train of dogs would leave the village and go
+far back on the hills to haul fire-wood, or poles for the new
+fish-flakes. The wolves, watching from their old den, would follow at a
+distance to pick up a careless dog that ventured away from the fire to
+hunt rabbits when his harness was taken off. Occasionally a solitary
+wood-chopper would start with sudden alarm as a big white form glided
+into sight, and the alarm would be followed by genuine terror as he
+found himself surrounded by five huge wolves that sat on their tails
+watching him curiously. Gripping his ax he would hurry back to call his
+companions and harness the dogs and hurry back to the village before the
+early darkness should fall upon them. As the komatik went careering over
+the snow, the dogs yelping and straining at the harness, the men running
+alongside shouting _Hi-hi_ and cracking their whips, they could still
+see, over their shoulders, the wolves following lightly close behind;
+but when they rushed breathless into their houses, and grabbed their
+guns, and ran back on the trail, there was nothing to be seen. For the
+wolves, quick as light to feel the presence of danger, were already far
+away, trotting swiftly up the frozen arm of the harbor, following
+another sledge trail which came down that morning from the wilderness.
+
+That same night the wolves appeared silently in the little lodge, far up
+the Southeast Brook, where in a sheltered hollow of the hills the
+fishermen's families were sleeping away the bitter winter. Here for one
+long night they watched and waited in vain; for every living thing was
+safe in the tilts behind barred doors. In the morning little Noel's eyes
+kindled as he saw the wolves' tracks; and when they came back again the
+tilts were watching. As the lop-eared cub darted after a cat that shot
+like a ray of moonlight under a cabin, a window opened noiselessly, and
+_zing!_ a bowstring twanged its sharp warning in the tense silence. With
+a yelp the wolf tore the arrow from his shoulder. The warm blood
+followed the barb, and he lapped it eagerly in his hunger. Then, as the
+danger swept over him, he gave the trail cry and darted away. Doors
+banged open here and there; dogs barked to crack their throats; seal
+guns roared out and sent their heavy echoes crashing like thunder among
+the hills. Silence fell again over the lodge; and there were left only a
+few frightened dogs whose noses had already told them everything, a few
+fishermen who watched and listened, and one Indian boy with a long bow
+in his hand and an arrow ready on the string, who trailed away with a
+little girl at his side trying to puzzle out the track of one wolf that
+left a drop of blood here and there on the snow in the scant moonlight.
+
+Far up on the hillside in a little opening of the woods the scattered
+pack came together again. At the first uproar, so unbearable to a
+silence-loving animal, they had vanished in five different directions;
+yet so subtle, so perfect is the instinct which holds a wolf family
+together that the old mother had scarcely entered the glade alone and
+sat down to wait and listen when the other wolves joined her silently.
+Malsunsis, the big cub, scarcely felt his wound at first, for the arrow
+had but glanced through the thick skin and flesh, and he had torn it out
+without difficulty; but the old he-wolf limped painfully and held up one
+fore leg, pierced by a seal shot, as he loped away over the snow.
+
+It was their first rough experience with men, and probably the one
+feeling in every shaggy head was of puzzled wonder as to how and why it
+had all happened. Hitherto they had avoided men with a certain awe, or
+watched them curiously at a distance, trying to understand their
+superior ways; and never a hostile feeling for the masters of the woods
+had found place in a wolf's breast. Now man had spoken at last; his
+voice was a brutal command to be gone, and curiously enough these
+powerful big brutes, any one of which could have pulled down a man more
+easily than a caribou, never thought of questioning the order.
+
+It was certainly time to follow the caribou--that was probably the one
+definite purpose that came upon the wolves, sitting in a silent,
+questioning circle in the moonlight, with only the deep snows and the
+empty woods around them. For a week they had not touched food; for
+thrice that time they had not fed full, and a few days more would leave
+them unable to cope with the big caribou, which are always full fed and
+strong, thanks to nature's abundance of deer moss on the barrens. So
+they started as by a single impulse, and the mother wolf led them
+swiftly southward, hour after hour at a tireless pace, till the great
+he-wolf weakened and turned aside to nurse his wounded fore leg. The
+lop-eared cub drew out of the race at the same time. His own wound now
+required the soft massage of his tongue to allay the fever; and besides,
+the fear that was born in him, one night long ago, and that had slept
+ever since, was now awake again, and for the first time he was afraid to
+face the famine and the wilderness alone. So the pack swept on, as if
+their feet would never tire, and the two wounded wolves crept into the
+scrub and lay down together.
+
+A strange, terrible feeling stole swiftly over the covert, which had
+always hitherto been a place of rest and quiet content. The cub was
+licking his wound softly when he looked up in sudden alarm, and there
+was the great he-wolf looking at him hungrily, with a frightful flare in
+his green eyes. The cub moved away startled and tried to soothe his
+wound again; but the uncanny feeling was strong upon him still, and when
+he turned his head there was the big wolf, which had crept forward till
+he could see the cub behind a twisted spruce root, watching him steadily
+with the same horrible stare in his unblinking eyes. The hackles rose up
+on the cub's neck and a growl rumbled in his deep chest, for he knew now
+what it all meant. The smell of blood was in the air, and the old
+he-wolf, that had so often shared his kill to save the cubs, was now
+going crazy in his awful hunger. Another moment and there would have
+been a terrible duel in the scrub; but as the wolves sprang to their
+feet and faced each other some deep, unknown feeling stirred within them
+and they turned aside. The old wolf threw himself down heavily, facing
+away from the temptation, and the cub slipped aside to find another den,
+out of sight and smell of the huge leader, lest the scent of blood
+should overcome them again and cause them to fly at each other's throats
+in uncontrollable fury.
+
+Next morning a queer thing happened, but not uncommon under the
+circumstances among wolves and huskies. The cub was lying motionless,
+his head on his paws, his eyes wide open, when something stirred near
+him. A red squirrel came scampering through the scrub branches just
+under the thick coating of snow that filled all their tops. Slowly,
+carefully the young wolf gathered his feet under him, tense as a
+bowstring. As the squirrel whisked overhead the wolf leaped like a
+flash, caught him, and crushed him with a single grip. Then with the
+squirrel in his mouth he made his way back to where the big leader was
+lying, his head on his paws, his eyes turned aside. Slowly, warily the
+cub approached, with a friendly twist of his ears and head, till he laid
+the squirrel at the big wolf's very nose, then drew back a step and lay
+with paws extended and tail thumping the leaves, watching till the
+tidbit was seized ravenously and crushed and bolted in a single
+mouthful. Next instant both wolves sprang to their feet and made their
+way out of the scrub together.
+
+They took up the trail of the pack where they had left it, and followed
+it ten hours, the cub at a swift trot, the old wolf loping along on
+three legs. Then a rest, and forward again, slower and slower, night
+after day in ever-failing strength, till on the edge of a great barren
+they stopped as if struck, trembling all over as the reek of game poured
+into their starving nostrils.
+
+Too weak now to kill or to follow the fleet caribou, they lay down in
+the snow waiting, their ears cocked, their noses questioning every
+breeze for its good news. Left to themselves the trail must end here,
+for they could go no farther; but somewhere ahead in the vast silent
+barren the cubs were trailing, and somewhere beyond them the old mother
+wolf was laying her ambush.--Hark! from a spur of the valley, far below
+on their left, rang out the food cry, singing its way in the frosty air
+over woods and plains, and hurrying back over the trail to tell those
+who had fallen by the way that they were not forgotten. And when they
+leaped up, as at an electric shock, and raced for the cry, there were
+the cubs and the mother wolf, their hunger already satisfied, and there
+in the snow a young bull caribou to save them.
+
+So the long, hard winter passed away, and spring came again with its
+abundance. Grouse drummed a welcome in the woods; the _honk_ of wild
+geese filled the air with a joyous clangor, and in every open pool the
+ducks were quacking. No need now to cling like shadows to the herds of
+caribou, and no further need for the pack to hold together. The ties
+that held them melted like snows in the sunny hollows. First the old
+wolves, then the cubs, one by one drifted away whither the game or their
+new mates were calling them. When the summer came there was another den
+on the high hill overlooking the harbor, where the little brown cubs
+could look down with wonder at the shining sea and the slow
+fishing-boats and the children playing on the shore; but the wolves
+whose trail began there were far away over the mountains, following
+their own ways, waiting for the crisp hunting cry that should bring them
+again together.
+
+
+
+_Trails that Cross in the Snow_
+
+"Are we lost, little brother?" said Mooka, shivering.
+
+No need of the question, startling and terrible as it was from the lips
+of a child astray in the vast solitudes; for a great gale had swooped
+down from the Arctic, blotting out in clouds of whirling snow the world
+of plain and mountain and forest that, a moment before, had stretched
+wide and still before the little hunters' eyes.
+
+For an hour or more, running like startled deer, they had tried to
+follow their own snow-shoe trail back over the wide barrens into the
+friendly woods; but already the snow had filled it brim full, and
+whatever faint trace was left of the long raquettes was caught up by the
+gale and whirled away with a howl of exultation. Before them as they ran
+every trail of wolf and caribou and snow-shoe, and every distant
+landmark, had vanished; the world was but a chaos of mad rolling snow
+clouds; and behind them--Their stout little hearts trembled as they saw
+not a vestige of the trail they had just made. With the great world
+itself, their own little tracks, as fast as they made them, were swept
+and blotted out of existence. Like two sparrows that had dropped blinded
+and bewildered on the vast plain out of the snow cloud, they huddled
+together without one friendly sign to tell them whence they had come or
+whither they were going. Worst of all, the instinct of direction, which
+often guides an Indian through the still fog or the darkest night,
+seemed benumbed by the cold and the tumult; and not even Old Tomah
+himself could have told north or south in the blinding storm.
+
+Still they ran on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, heading the
+wind as best they could, till Mooka, tripping a second time in a little
+hollow where a brook ran deep under the snow, and knowing now that they
+were but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel's arm and repeated
+her question:
+
+"Are we lost, little brother?"
+
+And Noel, lost and bewildered, but gripping his bow in his fur mitten
+and peering here and there, like an old hunter, through the whirling
+flakes and rolling gusts to catch some landmark, some lofty crag or low
+tree-line that held steady in the mad dance of the world, still made
+confident Indian answer:
+
+"Noel not lost; Noel right here. Camp lost, little sister."
+
+"Can we find um, little brother?"
+
+"Oh, yes, we find um. Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now, after
+storm."
+
+"But storm last all night, and it's soon dark. Can we rest and not
+freeze? Mooka tired and--and frightened, little brother."
+
+"Sartin we rest; build um _commoosie_ and sleep jus' like bear in his
+den. Oh, yes, sartin we rest good," said Noel cheerfully.
+
+"And the wolves, little brother?" whispered Mooka, looking back timidly
+into the wild waste out of which they had come.
+
+"Never mind hwolves; nothing hunts in storm, little sister. Come on, we
+must find um woods now."
+
+For one brief moment the little hunter stood with upturned face, while
+Mooka bowed her head silently, and the great storm rolled unheeded over
+them. Still holding his long bow he stretched both hands to the sky in
+the mute appeal that _Keesuolukh_, the Great Mystery whom we call God,
+would understand better than all words. Then turning their backs to the
+gale they drifted swiftly away before it, like two wind-blown leaves,
+running to keep from freezing, and holding each other's hands tight lest
+they separate and be lost by the way.
+
+The second winter had come, sealing up the gloomy land till it rang like
+iron at the touch, then covering it deep with snow and polishing its
+mute white face with hoar-frost and hail driven onward by the fierce
+Arctic gales. An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a
+chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might
+travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early
+twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves,
+the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless,
+hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead.
+
+When the Moon of Famine came, the silence was rudely broken. Before
+daylight one morning, when the air was so tense and still that a whisper
+set it tinkling like silver bells, the rallying cry of the wolves rolled
+down from a mountain top; and the three cubs, that had waited long for
+the signal, left their separate trails far away and hurried to join the
+old leader.
+
+When the sun rose that morning one who stood on the high ridge of the
+Top Gallants, far to the eastward of Harbor Weal, would have seen seven
+trails winding down among the rocks and thickets. It needed only a
+glance to show that the seven trails, each one as clear-cut and delicate
+as that of a prowling fox, were the records of wolves' cautious feet;
+and that they were no longer beating the thickets for grouse and
+rabbits, but moving swiftly all together for the edges of the vast
+barrens where the caribou herds were feeding. Another glance--but here
+we must have the cunning eyes of Old Tomah the hunter--would have told
+that two of the trails were those of enormous wolves which led the pack;
+two others were plainly cubs that had not yet lost the cub trick of
+frolicking in the soft snow; while three others were just wolves, big
+and powerful brutes that moved as if on steel springs, and that still
+held to the old pack because the time had not yet come for them to
+scatter finally to their separate ways and head new packs of their own
+in the great solitudes.
+
+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. They followed stealthily the winding records of a score of
+caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren,
+stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou
+moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two
+Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps,
+scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that
+hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the
+woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So
+they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled
+exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and
+laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail,
+the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and
+swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.
+
+Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white
+surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion
+so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the
+edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had
+been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the
+snow and settle to rest again. But now, where the plain seemed most
+empty and lifeless, seven great white wolves crouched down in the snow
+in a little hollow, their paws extended, their hind legs bent like
+powerful springs beneath them, their heads raised cautiously so that
+only their ears and eyes showed above the rim of the little hollow where
+they hid. So they lay, tense, alert, ready, watching with eager,
+inquisitive eyes the two children drawing steadily nearer, the only sign
+of life in the whole wide, desolate landscape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Follow the back trail of the snow-shoes now, while the wolves are
+waiting, and it leads you over the great barren into the gloomy spruce
+woods; beyond that it crosses two more barrens and stretches of
+intervening forest; then up a great hill and down into a valley, where
+the lodge lay hidden, buried deep under Newfoundland snows.
+
+Here the fishermen lived, sleeping away the bitter winter. In the late
+autumn they had left the fishing village at Harbor Weal, driven out like
+the wild ducks by the fierce gales that raged over the whole coast. With
+their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail
+up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and led into
+a great silent wood, sheltered on every side by the encircling hills.
+Here the tilts were built with double walls, filled in between with
+leaves and moss, to help the little stoves that struggled bravely with
+the terrible cold; and the roofs were covered over with poles and bark,
+or with the brown sails that had once driven the fishing-boats out and
+in on the wings of the gale. The high mountains on the west stood
+between them and the icy winds that swept down over the sea from the
+Labrador and the Arctic wastes; wood in abundance was at their doors,
+and the trout-stream that sang all day long under its bridges of snow
+and ice was always ready to brim their kettles out of its abundance.
+
+So the new life began pleasantly enough; but as the winter wore away and
+provisions grew scarce and game vanished from the coverts, they all felt
+the fearful pinch of famine. Every morning now a confused circle of
+tracks in the snow showed where the wild prowlers of the woods had come
+and sniffed at the very doors of the tilts in their ravening hunger.
+
+Noel's father and Old Tomah were far away, trapping, in the interior;
+and to Noel with his snares and his bow and arrows fell the pleasant
+task of supplying the family's need when the stock of dried fish melted
+away. On this March morning he had started with Mooka at daylight to
+cross the mountains to some great barrens where he had found tracks and
+knew that a few herds of caribou were still feeding. The sun was dimmed
+as it rose, and the sun-dogs gave mute warning of the coming storm; but
+the cupboard was empty at home, and even a little hunter thinks first of
+the game he is following and lets the storm take care of itself. So they
+hurried on unheeding,--Noel with his bow and arrows, Mooka with a little
+bag containing a loaf and a few dried caplin,--peering under every brush
+pile for the shining eyes of a rabbit, and picking up one big grouse and
+a few ptarmigan among the bowlders of a great bare hillside. On the
+edges of the great barren under the Top Gallants they found the fresh
+tracks of feeding caribou, and were following eagerly when they ran
+plump into the wolf trail.
+
+Now by every law of the chase the game belonged to these earlier
+hunters; and by every power in their gaunt, famished bodies the wolves
+meant to have it. So said the trail. Every stealthy advance in single
+file across, the open, every swift rush over the hollows that might hide
+them from eyes watching back from the distant woods, showed the wolves'
+purpose clear as daylight; and had Noel been wiser he would have read a
+warning from the snow and turned aside. But he only drew his longest,
+keenest arrow and pressed on more eagerly than before.
+
+The two trails had crossed each other at last. Beginning near together,
+one on the mountains, the other by the sea, they had followed their
+separate devious ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now
+drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the
+makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly,
+inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them
+apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by
+the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that
+subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild
+rangers of the plains, and that still leads a wolf to follow and watch
+the doings of men with intense curiosity. Now the trails had met fairly
+in the snow, and a few steps more would bring the boy and the wolf face
+to face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Noel was stealing along warily, his arrow ready on the string. Mooka
+beside him was watching a faint cloud of mist, the breath of caribou,
+that blurred at times the dark tree-line in the distance, when one of
+those mysterious warnings that befall the hunter in the far North rested
+upon them suddenly like a heavy hand.
+
+I know not what it is,--what lesser pressure of air, to which we respond
+like a barometer; or what unknown chords there are within us that sleep
+for years in the midst of society and that waken and answer, like an
+animal's, to the subtle influence of nature,--but one can never be
+watched by an unseen wild animal without feeling it vaguely; and one can
+never be so keen on the trail that the storm, before it breaks, will not
+whisper a warning to turn back to shelter before it is too late. To Noel
+and Mooka, alone on the barrens, the sun was no dimmer than before; the
+heavy gray bank of clouds still held sullenly to its place on the
+horizon; and no eyes, however keen, would have noticed the tiny dark
+spots that centered and glowed upon them over the rim of the little
+hollow where the wolves were watching. Nevertheless, a sudden chill fell
+upon them both. They stopped abruptly, shivering a bit, drawing closer
+together and scanning the waste keenly to know what it all meant.
+
+"_Mitcheegeesookh_, the storm!" said Noel sharply; and without another
+word they turned and hurried back on their own trail. In a short half
+hour the world would be swallowed up in chaos. To be caught out on the
+barrens meant to be lost; and to be lost here without fire and shelter
+meant death, swift and sure. So they ran on, hoping to strike the woods
+before the blizzard burst upon them.
+
+They were scarcely half-way to shelter when the white flakes began to
+whirl around them. With startling, terrible swiftness the familiar world
+vanished; the guiding trail was blotted out, and nothing but a wolf's
+instinct could have held a straight course in the blinding fury of the
+storm. Still they held on bravely, trying in vain to keep their
+direction by the eddying winds, till Mooka stumbled twice at the same
+hollow over a hidden brook, and they knew they were running blindly in a
+circle of death. Frightened at the discovery they turned, as the caribou
+do, keeping their backs steadily to the winds, and drifted slowly away
+down the long barren.
+
+Hour after hour they struggled on, hand in hand, without a thought of
+where they were going. Twice Mooka fell and lay still, but was dragged
+to her feet and hurried onward again. The little hunter's own strength
+was almost gone, when a low moan rose steadily above the howl and hiss
+of the gale. It was the spruce woods, bending their tops to the blast
+and groaning at the strain. With a wild whoop Noel plunged forward, and
+the next instant they were safe within the woods. All around them the
+flakes sifted steadily, silently down into the thick covert, while the
+storm passed with a great roar over their heads.
+
+In the lee of a low-branched spruce they stopped again, as though by a
+common impulse, while Noel lifted his hands. "Thanks, thanks,
+_Keesuolukh_; we can take care of ourselves now," the brave little heart
+was singing under the upstretched arms. Then they tumbled into the snow
+and lay for a moment utterly relaxed, like two tired animals, in that
+brief, delicious rest which follows a terrible struggle with the storm
+and cold.
+
+First they ate a little of their bread and fish to keep up their
+spirits; then--for the storm that was upon them might last for
+days--they set about preparing a shelter. With a little search, whooping
+to each other lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that some
+gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried
+about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off
+his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a
+semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a
+deep hole there, with the snow banked up around it to the height of his
+head. Next with his knife he cut a lot of light poles and scrub spruces
+and, sticking the butts in his snowbank, laid the tops, like the sticks
+of a wigwam, firmly against the big stub. A few armfuls of spruce boughs
+shingled over this roof, and a few minutes' work shoveling snow thickly
+upon them to hold them in place and to make a warm covering; then a
+doorway, or rather a narrow tunnel, just beyond the stub on the straight
+side of the semicircle, and their _commoosie_ was all ready. Let the
+storm roar and the snow sift down! The thicker it fell the warmer would
+be their shelter. They laughed and shouted now as they scurried out and
+in, bringing boughs for a bed and the fire-wood which Mooka had
+gathered.
+
+Against the base of the dry stub they built their fire,--a wee, sociable
+little fire such as an Indian always builds, which is far better than a
+big one, for it draws you near and welcomes you cheerily, instead of
+driving you away by its smoke and great heat. Soon the big stub itself
+began to burn, glowing steadily with a heat that filled the snug little
+_commoosie_, while the smoke found its way out of the hole in the roof
+which Noel had left for that purpose. Later the stub burned through to
+its hollow center, and then they had a famous chimney, which soon grew
+hot and glowing inside, and added its mite to the children's comfort.
+
+Noel and Mooka were drowsy now; but before the long night closed in upon
+them they had gathered more wood, and laid aside some wisps of birch
+bark to use when they should wake, cold and shivering, and find their
+little fire gone out and the big stub losing its cheery glow. Then they
+lay down to rest, and the night and the storm rolled on unheeded.
+
+Towards morning they fell into a heavy sleep; for the big stub began to
+burn more freely as the wind changed, and they need not stir every half
+hour to feed their little fire and keep from freezing. It was broad
+daylight, the storm had ceased, and a woodpecker was hammering loudly on
+a hollow shell over their heads when they started up, wondering vaguely
+where they were. Then while Noel broke out of the _commoosie_, which was
+fairly buried under the snow, to find out where he was, Mooka rebuilt
+the fire and plucked a ptarmigan and set it to toasting with the last of
+their bread over the coals.
+
+Noel came back soon with a cheery whoop to tell the little cook that
+they had drifted before the storm down the whole length of the great
+barren, and were camped now on the opposite side, just under the highest
+ridge of the Top Gallants. There was not a track on the barrens, he
+said; not a sign of wolf or caribou, which had probably wandered deeper
+into the woods for shelter. So they ate their bread to the last crumb
+and their bird to the last bone, and, giving up all thought of hunting,
+started up the big barren, heading for the distant Lodge, where they had
+long since been given up for lost.
+
+They had crossed the barren and a mile of thick woods beyond when they
+ran into the fresh trail of a dozen caribou. Following it swiftly they
+came to the edge of a much smaller barren that they had crossed
+yesterday, and saw at a glance that the trail stretched straight across
+it. Not a caribou was in sight; but they might nevertheless be feeding,
+or resting in the woods just beyond; and for the little hunters to show
+themselves now in the open would mean that they would become instantly
+the target for every keen eye that was watching the back trail. So they
+started warily to circle the barren, keeping just within the fringe of
+woods out of sight.
+
+They had gone scarcely a hundred steps when Noel whipped out a long
+arrow and pointed silently across the open. From the woods on the other
+side the caribou had broken out of a dozen tunnels under the spruces,
+and came trotting back in their old trails, straight downwind to where
+the little hunters were hiding.
+
+The deer were acting queerly,--now plunging away with the high, awkward
+jumps that caribou use when startled; now swinging off on their swift,
+tireless rack, and before they had settled to their stride halting
+suddenly to look back and wag their ears at the trail. For Megaleep is
+full of curiosity as a wild turkey, and always stops to get a little
+entertainment out of every new thing that does not threaten him with
+instant death. Then out of the woods behind them trotted five white
+wolves,--not hunting, certainly! for whenever the caribou stopped to
+look the wolves sat down on their tails and yawned. One lay down and
+rolled over and over in the soft snow; another chased and capered after
+his own brush, whirling round and round like a little whirlwind, and the
+shrill _ki-yi_ of a cub wolf playing came faintly across the barren.
+
+It was a strange scene, yet one often witnessed on the lonely plains of
+the far North: the caribou halting, running away, and halting again to
+look back and watch the queer antics of their big enemies, which seemed
+now so playful and harmless; the cunning wolves playing on the game's
+curiosity at every turn, knowing well that if once frightened the deer
+would break away at a pace which would make pursuit hopeless. So they
+followed rather than drove the foolish deer across the barren, holding
+them with monkey tricks and kitten's capers, and restraining with an
+iron grip their own fearful hunger and the blind impulse to rush in
+headlong and have it all quickly over.
+
+Kneeling behind a big spruce, Noel was trying nervously the spring and
+temper of his long bow, divided in desire between the caribou, which
+they needed sadly at home, and one of the great wolves whose death would
+give him a place among the mighty hunters, when Mooka clutched his arm,
+her eyes snapping with excitement, her finger pointing silently back on
+their own trail. A vague shadow glided swiftly among the trees. An
+enormous white wolf appeared, vanished, came near them again, and
+crouched down under a low spruce branch waiting.
+
+Again the two trails had crossed in the snow. The big wolf as he
+appeared had thrust his nose into the snow-shoe tracks, and a sniff or
+two told him everything,--who had passed, and how long ago, and what
+they were doing, and how far ahead they were now waiting. But the
+caribou were coming, coaxed along marvelously by the cubs and the old
+mother; and the great silent wolf, that had left the pack playing with
+the game while he circled the barren at top speed, now turned to the
+business in hand with no thought nor fear of harm from the two children
+whom he had watched but yesterday.
+
+Not so Noel. The fire blazed out in his eyes; the long bow swung to the
+wolf, bending like a steel spring, and the feathered shaft of an arrow
+lay close against the boy's cheek. But Mooka caught his arm--
+
+"Look, Noel, his ear! _Malsunsis_, my little wolf cub," she breathed
+excitedly. And Noel, with a great wonder in his eyes, slacked his bow,
+while his thoughts jumped far away to the den on the mountains where the
+trail began, and to three little cubs playing like kittens with the
+grasshoppers and the cloud shadows; for the great wolf that lay so still
+near them, his eyes fixed in a steady glow upon the coming caribou, had
+one ear bent sharply forward, like a leaf that has been creased between
+the fingers.
+
+Again Mooka broke the tense silence in a low whisper. "How many wolf
+trails you see yesterday, little brother?"
+
+"Seven," said Noel, whose eyes already had the cunning of Old Tomah's to
+understand everything.
+
+"Then where tother wolf? Only six here," breathed Mooka, looking timidly
+all around, fearing to find the steady glare of green eyes fixed upon
+them from the shadow of every thicket.
+
+Noel stirred uneasily. Somewhere close at hand another huge wolf was
+waiting; and a wholesome fear fell upon him, with a shiver at the
+thought of how near he had come in his excitement to bringing the whole
+savage pack snarling about his ears.
+
+A snort of alarm cut short his thinking. There at the edge of the wood,
+not twenty feet away, stood a caribou, pointing his ears at the children
+whom he had almost stumbled over as he ran, thinking only of the wolves
+behind. The long bow sprang back of itself; an arrow buzzed like a wasp
+and buried itself deep in the white chest. Like a flash a second arrow
+followed as the stag turned away, and with a jump or two he sank to his
+knees, as if to rest awhile in the snow.
+
+But Mooka scarcely saw these things. Her eyes were fastened on the great
+white wolf which she had claimed for her own when he was a toddling cub.
+He lay still as a stone under the tip of a bending spruce branch, his
+eyes following every motion of a young bull caribou which three of the
+wolves had singled out of the herd and were now guiding surely straight
+to his hiding-place.
+
+The snort and plunge of the smitten animal startled this young stag and
+he turned aside from his course. Like a shadow the big wolf that Mooka
+was watching changed his place so as to head the game, while two of the
+pack on the open barrens slipped around the caribou and turned him back
+again to the woods. At the edge of the cover the stag stopped for a last
+look, pointing his ears first at Noel's caribou, which now lay very
+still in the snow, then at the wolves, which with quick instinct had
+singled him out of the herd, knowing in some subtle way he was watched
+from beyond, and which gathered about him in a circle, sitting on their
+tails and yawning. Slowly, silently Mooka's wolf crept forward, pushing
+his great body through the snow. A terrific rush, a quick snap under the
+stag's chest just behind the fore legs, where the heart lay; then the
+big wolf leaped aside and sat down quietly again to watch.
+
+It was soon finished. The stag plunged away, settled into his long rack,
+slowed down to a swaying, weakening trot. After him at a distance glided
+the big wolf, lapping eagerly at the crimson trail, but holding himself
+with tremendous will power from rushing in headlong and driving the
+game, which might run for miles if too hard pressed. The stag sank to
+his knees; a sharp yelp rang like a pistol-shot through the still woods;
+then the pack rolled in like a whirlwind, and it was all over.
+
+Creeping near on the trail the little hunters crouched under a low
+spruce, watching as if fascinated the wild feast of the wolves. Noel's
+bow was ready in his hand; but luckily the sight of these huge, powerful
+brutes overwhelmed him and drove all thoughts of killing out of his
+head. Mooka plucked him by the sleeve at last, and pointed silently
+homewards. It was surely time to go, for the biggest wolf had already
+stretched himself and was licking his paws, while the two cubs with full
+stomachs were rolling over and over and biting each other playfully in
+the snow. Silently they stole away, stopping only to tie a rag to a
+pointed stick, which they thrust between their own caribou's ribs to
+make the wolves suspicious and keep them from tearing the game and
+eating the tidbits while the little hunters hurried away to bring the
+men with their guns and dog sledges.
+
+They had almost crossed the second barren when Mooka, looking back
+uneasily from the edge of the woods, saw a single big wolf emerge across
+the barren and follow swiftly on their trail. Startled at the sight,
+they turned swiftly to run; for that terrible feeling which sweeps over
+a hunter, when for the first time he finds himself hunted in his turn,
+had clutched their little hearts and crushed all their confidence. A
+sudden panic seized them; they rushed away for the woods, running side
+by side till they broke into the fringe of evergreen that surrounded the
+barren. There they dropped breathless under a low fir and turned to
+look.
+
+"It was wrong to run, little brother," whispered Mooka.
+
+"Why?" said Noel.
+
+"Cause Wayeeses see it, and think we 'fraid."
+
+"But I was 'fraid out there, little sister," confessed Noel bravely.
+"Here we can climb tree; good chance shoot um with my arrows."
+
+Like two frightened rabbits they crouched under the fir, staring back
+with wild round eyes over the trail, fearing every instant to see the
+savage pack break out of the woods and come howling after them. But only
+the single big wolf appeared, trotting quietly along in their footsteps.
+Within bowshot he stopped with head raised, looking, listening intently.
+Then, as if he had seen them in their hiding, he turned aside, circled
+widely to the left, and entered the woods far below.
+
+Again the two little hunters hurried on through the silent, snow-filled
+woods, a strange disquietude settling upon them as they felt they were
+followed by unseen feet. Soon the feeling grew too strong to resist.
+Noel with his bow ready, and a strange chill trickling like cold water
+along his spine, was hiding behind a tree watching the back trail, when
+a low exclamation from Mooka made him turn. There behind them, not ten
+steps away, a huge white wolf was sitting quietly on his tail, watching
+them with absorbed, silent intentness.
+
+Fear and wonder, and swift memories of Old Tomah and the wolf that had
+followed him when he was lost, swept over Noel in a flood. He rose
+swiftly, the long bow bent, and again a deadly arrow cuddled softly
+against his cheek; but there were doubts and fears in his eye till Mooka
+caught his arm with a glad little laugh--
+
+"My cub, little brother. See his ear, and oh, his tail! Watch um tail,
+little brother." For at the first move the big wolf sprang alertly to
+his feet, looked deep into Mooka's eyes with that intense, penetrating
+light which serves a wild animal to read your very thoughts, and
+instantly his great bushy tail was waving its friendly greeting.
+
+It was indeed Malsunsis, the cub. Before the great storm broke he had
+crouched with the pack in the hollow just in front of the little
+hunters; and although the wolves were hungry, it was with feelings of
+curiosity only that they watched the children, who seemed to the
+powerful brutes hardly more to be feared than a couple of snowbirds
+hopping across the vast barren. But they were children of men--that was
+enough for the white-wolf packs, which for untold years had never been
+known to molest a man. This morning Malsunsis had again crossed their
+trail. He had seen them lying in wait for the caribou that his own pack
+were driving; had seen Noel smite the bull, and was filled with wonder;
+but his own business kept him still in hiding. Now, well fed and
+good-natured, but more curious than ever, he had followed the trail of
+these little folk to learn something about them.
+
+Mooka as she watched him was brim full of an eagerness which swept away
+all fear. "Tomah says, wolf and Injun hunt just alike; keep ver' still;
+don't trouble game 'cept when he hungry," she whispered. "Says too,
+_Keesuolukh_ made us friends 'fore white man come, spoil um everything.
+Das what Malsunsis say now wid hees tail and eyes; only way he can talk
+um, little brother. No, no,"--for Noel's bow was still strongly
+bent,--"you must not shoot. Malsunsis think we friends." And trusting
+her own brave little heart she stepped in front of the deadly arrow and
+walked straight to the big wolf, which moved aside timidly and sat down
+again at a distance, with the friendly expression of a lost collie in
+eyes and ears and wagging tail tip.
+
+Cheerfully enough Noel slacked his long bow, for the wonder of the woods
+was strong upon him, and the hunting-spirit, which leads one forth to
+frighten and kill and to break the blessed peace, had vanished in the
+better sense of comradeship which steals over one when he watches the
+Wood Folk alone and friendly in the midst of the solitudes. As they went
+on their way again the big wolf trotted after them, keeping close to
+their trail but never crossing it, and occasionally ranging up
+alongside, as if to keep them in the right way. Where the woods were
+thickest Noel, with no trail to guide him, swung uncertainly to left and
+right, peering through the trees for some landmark on the distant hills.
+Twice the big wolf trotted out to one side, returned and trotted out
+again in the same direction; and Noel, taking the subtle hint, as an
+Indian always does, bore steadily to the right till the great ridge,
+beyond which the Lodge was hidden, loomed over the tree-tops. And to
+this day he believes--and it is impossible, for I have tried, to
+dissuade him--that the wolf knew where they were going and tried in his
+own way to show them.
+
+So they climbed the long ridge to the summit, and from the deep valley
+beyond the smoke of the Lodge rose up to guide them. There the wolf
+stopped; and though Noel whistled and Mooka called cheerily, as they
+would to one of their own huskies that they had learned to love,
+Malsunsis would go no farther. He sat there on the ridge, his tail
+sweeping a circle in the snow behind him, his ears cocked to the
+friendly call and his eyes following every step of the little hunters,
+till they vanished in the woods below. Then he turned to follow his own
+way in the wilderness.
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
+
+Cheokhes, _chê-ok-h[)e]s'_, the mink.
+
+Cheplahgan, _chep-lâh'gan_, the bald eagle.
+
+Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, _ch`gee-gee'lock-sis_, the chickadee.
+
+Chigwooltz, _chig-wooltz'_, the bullfrog.
+
+Clóte Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians.
+Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc.
+
+Commoosie, _com-moo-sie'_, a little shelter, or hut, of boughs and bark.
+
+Deedeeaskh, _dee-dee'ask_, the blue jay.
+
+Eleemos, _el-ee'mos_, the fox.
+
+Hawahak, _hâ-wâ-h[)a]k'_, the hawk.
+
+Hetokh, _h[)e]t'[=o]kh_, the deer.
+
+Hukweem, _huk-weem'_, the great northern diver, or loon.
+
+Ismaques, _iss-mâ-ques'_, the fish-hawk.
+
+Kagax, _k[)a]g'[)a]x_, the weasel.
+
+Kakagos, _kâ-kâ-g[)o]s'_, the raven.
+
+K'dunk, _k'dunk'_, the toad.
+
+Keeokuskh, _kee-o-kusk'_, the muskrat.
+
+Keeonekh, _kee'o-nek_, the otter.
+
+Keesuolukh, _kee-su-[=o]'luk_, the Great Mystery, i.e. God.
+
+Killooleet, _kil'loo-leet_, the white-throated sparrow.
+
+Kookooskoos, _koo-koo-skoos'_, the great horned owl.
+
+Kopseep, _kop'seep_, the salmon.
+
+Koskomenos, _k[)o]s'k[)o]m-e-n[)o]s'_, the kingfisher.
+
+Kupkawis, _cup-ka'wis_, the barred owl.
+
+Kwaseekho, _kwâ-seek'ho_, the sheldrake.
+
+Lhoks, _locks_, the panther.
+
+Malsun, _m[)a]l'sun_, the wolf.
+
+Malsunsis, _m[)a]l-sun'sis_, the little wolf cub.
+
+Matwock, _m[)a]t'wok_, the white bear.
+
+Meeko, _meek'[=o]_, the red squirrel.
+
+Megaleep, _meg'â-leep_, the caribou.
+
+Milicete, _mil'[)i]-cete_, the name of an Indian tribe; written also
+Malicete.
+
+Mitchegeesookh, _mitch-ë-gee'sook_, the snowstorm.
+
+Mitches, _mit'ch[)e]s_, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse.
+
+Moktaques, _mok-tâ'ques_, the hare.
+
+Mooween, _moo-ween'_, the black bear.
+
+Mooweesuk, _moo-wee'suk_, the coon.
+
+Musquash, _mus'quâsh_, the muskrat.
+
+Nemox, _n[)e]m'ox_, the fisher.
+
+Pekompf, _pe-kompf'_, the wildcat.
+
+Pekquam, _pek-w[)a]m'_, the fisher.
+
+Queokh, _qu[=e]'ok_, the sea-gull.
+
+Quoskh, _quoskh_, the blue heron.
+
+Seksagadagee, _sek'sâ-gä-dâ'gee_, the Canada grouse, or spruce
+partridge.
+
+Skooktum, _skook'tum_, the trout.
+
+Tookhees, _tôk'hees_, the wood-mouse.
+
+Umquenawis, _um-que-nâ'wis_, the moose.
+
+Unk Wunk, _unk'wunk_, the porcupine.
+
+Upweekis, _up-week'iss_, the Canada lynx.
+
+Waptonk, _w[)a]p-tonk'_, the wild goose.
+
+Wayeesis, _way-ee'sis_, the white wolf, the strong one.
+
+Whitooweek, _whit-oo-week'_, the woodcock.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Northern Trails, Book I., by William J. Long
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Trails, Book I., by William J. Long
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Northern Trails, Book I.
+
+Author: William J. Long
+
+Release Date: December 5, 2003 [EBook #10389]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHERN TRAILS, BOOK I. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Maria Cecilia Lim and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+NORTHERN TRAILS
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+By
+
+William J. Long
+
+
+_WOOD FOLK SERIES BOOK VI_
+
+
+1905
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In the original preface to "Northern Trails" the author stated that,
+with the solitary exception of the salmon's life in the sea after he
+vanishes from human sight, every incident recorded here is founded
+squarely upon personal and accurate observation of animal life and
+habits. I now repeat and emphasize that statement. Even when the
+observations are, for the reader's sake, put into the form of a
+connected story, there is not one trait or habit mentioned which is not
+true to animal life.
+
+Such a statement ought to be enough, especially as I have repeatedly
+furnished evidence from reliable eye-witnesses to support every
+observation that the critics have challenged; but of late a strenuous
+public attack has been made upon the wolf story in this volume by two
+men claiming to speak with authority. They take radical exception to my
+record of a big white wolf killing a young caribou by snapping at the
+chest and heart. They declared this method of killing to be "a
+mathematical impossibility" and, by inference, a gross falsehood,
+utterly ruinous to true ideas of wolves and of natural history.
+
+As no facts or proofs are given to support this charge, the first thing
+which a sensible man naturally does is to examine the fitness of the
+critics, in order to ascertain upon what knowledge or experience they
+base their dogmatic statements. One of these critics is a man who has no
+personal knowledge of wolves or caribou, who asserts that the animal has
+no possibility of reason or intelligence, and who has for years publicly
+denied the observations of other men which tend to disprove his ancient
+theory. It seems hardly worth while to argue about either wolves or men
+with such a naturalist, or to point out that Descartes' idea of animals,
+as purely mechanical or automatic creatures, has long since been laid
+aside and was never considered seriously by any man who had lived close
+to either wild or domestic animals. The second critic's knowledge of
+wolves consists almost entirely of what he has happened to see when
+chasing the creatures with dogs and hunters. Judging by his own nature
+books, with their barbaric records of slaughter, his experience of wild
+animals was gained while killing them. Such a man will undoubtedly
+discover some things about animals, how they fight and hide and escape
+their human enemies; but it hardly needs any argument to show that the
+man who goes into the woods with dogs and rifles and the desire to kill
+can never understand any living animal.
+
+If you examine now any of the little books which he condemns, you will
+find a totally different story: no record of chasing and killing, but
+only of patient watching, of creeping near to wild animals and winning
+their confidence whenever it is possible, of following them day and
+night with no motive but the pure love of the thing and no object but to
+see exactly what each animal is doing and to understand, so far as a man
+can, the mystery of its dumb life.
+
+Naturally a man in this attitude will see many traits of animal life
+which are hidden from the game-killer as well as from the scientific
+collector of skins. For instance, practically all wild animals are shy
+and timid and run away at man's approach. This is the general experience
+not only of hunters but of casual observers in the woods. Yet my own
+experience has many times shown me exactly the opposite trait: that when
+these same shy animals find me unexpectedly close at hand, more than
+half the time they show no fear whatever but only an eager curiosity to
+know who and what the creature is that sits so quietly near them.
+Sometimes, indeed, they seem almost to understand the mental attitude
+which has no thought of harm but only of sympathy and friendly interest.
+Once I was followed for hours by a young wolf which acted precisely like
+a lost dog, too timid to approach and too curious or lonely to run away.
+He even wagged his tail when I called to him softly. Had I shot him on
+sight, I would probably have foolishly believed that he intended to
+attack me when he came trotting along my trail. Three separate times I
+have touched a wild deer with my hand; once I touched a moose, once an
+eagle, once a bear; and a score of times at least I have had to frighten
+these big animals or get out of their way, when their curiosity brought
+them too near for perfect comfort.
+
+So much for the personal element, for the general attitude and fitness
+of the observer and his critics. But the question is not chiefly a
+personal one; it is simply a matter of truth and observation, and the
+only honest or scientific method is, first, to go straight to nature and
+find out the facts; and then--lest your own eyesight or judgment be at
+fault--to consult other observers to find if, perchance, they also have
+seen the facts exemplified. This is not so easy as to dogmatize or to
+write animal stories; but it is the only safe method, and one which the
+nature writer as well as the scientist must follow if his work is to
+endure.
+
+Following this good method, when the critics had proclaimed that my
+record of a big wolf killing a young caribou by biting into the chest
+and heart was an impossibility, I went straight to the big woods and, as
+soon as the law allowed, secured photographs and exact measurements of
+the first full-grown deer that crossed my trail. These photographs and
+measurements show beyond any possibility of honest doubt the following
+facts: (1) The lower chest of a deer, between and just behind the
+forelegs, is thin and wedge-shaped, exactly as I stated, and the point
+of the heart is well down in this narrow wedge. The distance through the
+chest and point of the heart from side to side was, in this case,
+exactly four and one-half inches. A man's hand, as shown in the
+photograph, can easily grasp the whole lower chest of a deer, placing
+thumb and forefinger over the heart on opposite sides. (2) The heart of
+a deer, and indeed of all ruminant animals, lies close against the chest
+walls and is easily reached and wounded. The chest cartilage, except in
+an old deer, is soft; the ribs are thin and easily crushed, and the
+spaces between the ribs are wide enough to admit a man's finger, to say
+nothing of a wolf's fang. In this case the point of the heart, as the
+deer lay on his side, was barely five eights of an inch from the
+surface. (3) Any dog or wolf, therefore, having a spread of jaws of four
+and one-half inches, and fangs three quarters of an inch long, could
+easily grasp the chest of this deer from beneath and reach the heart
+from either side. As the jaws of the big northern wolf spread from six
+to eight inches and his fangs are over an inch long, to kill a deer in
+this way would require but a slight effort. The chest of a caribou is
+anatomically exactly like that of other deer; only the caribou fawn and
+yearling of "Northern Trails" have smaller chests than the animals I
+measured.
+
+So much for the facts and the possibilities. As for specific instances,
+years ago I found a deer just killed in the snow and beside him the
+fresh tracks of a big wolf, which had probably been frightened away at
+my approach. The deer was bitten just behind and beneath the left
+shoulder, and one long fang had entered the heart. There was not another
+scratch on the body, so far as I could discover. I thought this very
+exceptional at the time; but years afterwards my Indian guide in the
+interior of Newfoundland assured me that it was a common habit of
+killing caribou among the big white wolves with which he was familiar.
+To show that the peculiar habit is not confined to any one section, I
+quote here from the sworn statements of three other eyewitnesses. The
+first is superintendent of the Algonquin National Park, a man who has
+spent a lifetime in the North Woods and who has at present an excellent
+opportunity for observing wild-animal habits; the second is an educated
+Sioux Indian; the third is a geologist and mining engineer, now
+practicing his profession in Philadelphia.
+
+
+ALGONQUIN PARK, ONTARIO, August 31, 1907.
+
+This certifies that during the past thirty years spent in our Canadian
+wilds, I have seen several animals killed by our large timber wolves. In
+the winter of 1903 I saw two deer thus killed on Smoke Lake, Nipissing,
+Ontario. One deer was bitten through the front chest, the other just
+behind the foreleg. In each case there was no other wound on the body.
+
+[Signed] G.W. BARTLETT, _Superintendent_.
+
+
+I certify that I lived for twenty years in northern Nebraska and Dakota,
+in a region where timber wolves were abundant.... I saw one horse that
+had just been killed by a wolf. The front of his chest was torn open to
+the heart. There was no other wound on the body. I once watched a wolf
+kill a stray horse on the open prairie. He kept nipping at the hind
+legs, making the horse turn rapidly till he grew dizzy and fell down.
+Then the wolf snapped or bit into his chest.... The horse died in a few
+moments.
+
+[Signed] STEPHEN JONES (HEPIDAN).
+
+
+I certify that in November, 1900, while surveying in Wyoming, my party
+saw two wolves chase a two-year-old colt over a cliff some fifteen or
+sixteen feet high. I was on the spot with two others immediately after
+the incident occurred. The only injuries to the colt, aside from a
+broken leg, were deep lacerations made by wolf fangs in the chest behind
+the foreshoulder. In addition to this personal observation I have
+frequently heard from hunters, herders, and cowboys that big wolves
+frequently kill deer and other animals by snapping at the chest.
+
+[Signed] F.S. PUSEY.
+
+
+I have more evidence of the same kind from the region which I described
+in "Northern Trails"; but I give these three simply to show that what
+one man discovers as a surprising trait of some individual wolf or deer
+may be common enough when we open our eyes to see. The fact that wolves
+do not always or often kill in this way has nothing to do with the
+question. I know one small region where old wolves generally hunt in
+pairs and, so far as I can discover, one wolf always trips or throws the
+game, while the other invariably does the killing at the throat. In
+another region, including a part of Algonquin Park, in Ontario, I have
+the records of several deer killed by wolves in a single winter; and in
+every case the wolf slipped up behind his game and cut the femoral
+artery, or the inner side of the hind leg, and then drew back quietly,
+allowing the deer to bleed to death.
+
+The point is, that because a thing is unusual or interesting it is not
+necessarily false, as my dogmatic critics would have you believe. I have
+studied animals, not as species but as individuals, and have recorded
+some things which other and better naturalists have overlooked; but I
+have sought for facts, first of all, as zealously as any biologist, and
+have recorded only what I have every reason to believe is true. That
+these facts are unusual means simply that we have at last found natural
+history to be interesting, just as the discovery of unusual men and
+incidents gives charm and meaning to the records of our humanity. There
+may be honest errors or mistakes in these books--and no one tries half
+so hard as the author to find and correct them--but meanwhile the fact
+remains that, though six volumes of the Wood Folk books have already
+been published, only three slight errors have thus far been pointed out,
+and these were promptly and gratefully acknowledged.
+
+The simple truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all
+true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things
+that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are
+not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our
+preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt that romancing is
+rife just now on the part of men who study animals in a library; but
+personally, with my note-books full of incidents which I have never yet
+recorded, I find the truth more interesting, and I cannot understand why
+a man should deliberately choose romance when he can have the greater
+joy of going into the wilderness to see with his own eyes and to
+understand with his own heart just how the animals live. One thing seems
+to me to be more and more certain: that we are only just beginning to
+understand wild animals, and it is chiefly our own barbarism, our lust
+of killing, our stupid stuffed specimens, and especially our prejudices
+which stand in the way of greater knowledge. Meanwhile the critic who
+asserts dogmatically what a wild animal will or will not do under
+certain conditions only proves how carelessly he has watched them and
+how little he has learned of Nature's infinite variety.
+
+WILLIAM J. LONG
+
+STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
+
+THE OLD WOLF'S CHALLENGE
+
+WHERE THE TRAIL BEGINS
+
+NOEL AND MOOKA
+
+THE WAY OF THE WOLF
+
+THE WHITE WOLF'S HUNTING
+
+TRAILS THAT CROSS IN THE SNOW
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
+
+
+
+FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"A QUICK SNAP WHERE THE HEART LAY"
+
+"THE TERRIBLE HOWL OF A GREAT WHITE WOLF"
+
+"WATCHING HER GROWING YOUNGSTERS"
+
+"AS THE MOTHER'S LONG JAWS CLOSED OVER THE SMALL OF THE BACK"
+
+"THE SILENT, APPALLING DEATH-WATCH BEGAN"
+
+
+
+WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE
+
+
+
+_The Old Wolf's Challenge_
+
+We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped
+down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the
+mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black
+rocks and the reefs bared their teeth on either side, like the long jaws
+of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed.
+
+In our flight we had picked up a fisherman--snatched him out of his
+helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him
+aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet--and it was
+he who now stood at the wheel of our little schooner and took her
+careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate,
+rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the _Wild Duck_ swung to
+her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and
+clanking her chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At
+sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and
+clear over the dark mountains.
+
+Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the
+foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, every man glad in his
+heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the
+desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness
+brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black
+rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered
+the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver in the
+moonlight; far away, like a vague shadow, a handful of little gray
+houses clung like barnacles to the base of a great bare hill whose foot
+was in the sea and whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not a
+light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from these little
+houses, whose shells close daily at twilight over the life within, weary
+with the day's work. Only the dogs were restless--those strange
+creatures that shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in
+another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out from ours by
+impassable barriers.
+
+For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry
+brutes that drew the sledges in winter and that picked up a vagabond
+living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's
+flakes and pig-pens and by catching flounders in the sea as the tide
+ebbed. Venture among them with fear in your heart and they would fly at
+your legs and throat like wild beasts; but twirl a big stick jauntily,
+or better still go quietly on your way without concern, and they would
+skulk aside and watch you hungrily out of the corners of their surly
+eyes, whose lids were red and bloodshot as a mastiff's. When the moon
+rose I noticed them flitting about like witches on the lonely shore,
+miles away from the hamlet; now sitting on their tails in a solemn
+circle; now howling all together as if demented, and anon listening
+intently in the vast silence, as if they heard or smelled or perhaps
+just felt the presence of some unknown thing that was hidden from human
+senses. And when I paddled ashore to watch them one ran swiftly past
+without heeding me, his nose outstretched, his eyes green as foxfire in
+the moonlight, while the others vanished like shadows among the black
+rocks, each intent on his unknown quest.
+
+That is why I had come up from my warm bunk at midnight to sit alone on
+the taffrail, listening in the keen air to the howling that made me
+shiver, spite of myself, and watching in the vague moonlight to
+understand if possible what the brutes felt amid the primal silence and
+desolation.
+
+A long interval of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make
+out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when
+suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the
+mountains, _ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ a long wailing crescendo beginning
+softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the
+sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to
+crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into
+indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to
+certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping
+within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased
+abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks. From
+far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the
+cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep. Then
+silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a
+winding-sheet.
+
+As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept
+undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the
+foremast. As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the
+night he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching
+alone. "Das Wayeeses. I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh, long,
+long while ago," he whispered. And taking my marine glasses he stood
+beside me watching intently.
+
+[Illustration: "The terrible howl of the great white wolf"]
+
+There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled as
+they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we turned
+our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for the
+challenge. Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught something
+moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain. A shadow with the slinking
+trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the moon. Just in
+front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a pointed nose up
+to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight,
+and--_ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ the terrible howl of a great white wolf
+tumbled down on the husky dogs and set them howling as if possessed. No
+doubt now of their queer actions which had puzzled me for hours past.
+The wild wolf had called and the tame wolves waked to answer. Before my
+dull ears had heard a rumor of it they were crazy with the excitement.
+Now every chord in their wild hearts was twanging its thrilling answer
+to the leader's summons, and my own heart awoke and thrilled as it never
+did before to the call of a wild beast.
+
+For an hour or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate
+mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be
+free again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs,
+which refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from
+overmastering temptation. Then the shadow vanished from the big rock on
+the mountain, the huskies fled away wildly from the shore, and only the
+sob of the breakers broke the stillness.
+
+That was my first (and Noel's last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the
+huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea to
+study. All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed him,
+guided sometimes by a rumor--a hunter's story or a postman's fright,
+caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with his dogs
+through the long winter night--and again by a track on the shore of some
+lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou flying wildly
+from some unseen danger. Here is the white wolf's story, learned partly
+from much watching and following his tracks alone, but more from Noel
+the Indian hunter, in endless tramps over the hills and caribou marshes
+and in long quiet talks in the firelight beside the salmon rivers.
+
+
+
+_Where the Trail Begins_
+
+From a cave in the rocks, on the unnamed mountains that tower over
+Harbor Weal on the north and east, a huge mother wolf appeared,
+stealthily, as all wolves come out of their dens. A pair of green eyes
+glowed steadily like coals deep within the dark entrance; a massive gray
+head rested unseen against the lichens of a gray rock; then the whole
+gaunt body glided like a passing cloud shadow into the June sunshine and
+was lost in a cleft of the rocks.
+
+There, in the deep shadow where no eye might notice the movement, the
+old wolf shook off the delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all
+her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the
+toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders
+till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out
+straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little
+jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and
+showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs
+that could reach a deer's heart in a single snap. Then she leaped upon a
+great rock and sat up straight, with her bushy tail curled close about
+her fore paws, a savage, powerful, noble-looking beast, peering down
+gravely over the green mountains to the shining sea.
+
+A moment before the hillside had appeared utterly lifeless, so still and
+rugged and desolate that one must notice and welcome the stir of a mouse
+or ground squirrel in the moss, speaking of life that is glad and free
+and vigorous even in the deepest solitudes; yet now, so quietly did the
+old wolf appear, so perfectly did her rough gray coat blend with the
+rough gray rocks, that the hillside seemed just as tenantless as before.
+A stray wind seemed to move the mosses, that was all. Only where the
+mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw every
+moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats
+far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every
+chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was
+holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For
+the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world,
+and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite
+precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid.
+
+A faint breeze from the west strayed over the mountains and instantly
+the old wolf turned her sensitive nose to question it. There on her
+right, and just across a deep ravine where a torrent went leaping down
+to the sea in hundred-foot jumps, a great stag caribou was standing,
+still as a stone, on a lofty pinnacle, looking down over the marvelous
+panorama spread wide beneath his feet. Every day Megaleep came there to
+look, and the old wolf in her daily hunts often crossed the deep path
+which he had worn through the moss from the wide table-lands over the
+ridge to this sightly place where he could look down curiously at the
+comings and goings of men on the sea. But at this season when small game
+was abundant--and indeed at all seasons when not hunger-driven--the wolf
+was peaceable and the caribou were not molested. Indeed the big stag
+knew well where the old wolf denned. Every east wind brought her message
+to his nostrils; but secure in his own strength and in the general peace
+which prevails in the summer-time among all large animals of the north,
+he came daily to look down on the harbor and wag his ears at the
+fishing-boats, which he could never understand.
+
+Strange neighbors these, the grim, savage mother wolf of the mountains,
+hiding her young in dens of the rocks, and the wary, magnificent
+wanderer of the broad caribou barrens; but they understood each other,
+and neither wolf nor caribou had any fear or hostile intent one for the
+other. And this is not strange at all, as might be supposed by those who
+think animals are governed by fear on one hand and savage cruelty on the
+other, but is one of the commonest things to be found by those who
+follow faithfully the northern trails.
+
+Wayeeses had chosen her den well, on the edge of the untrodden
+solitudes--sixty miles as the crow flies--that stretch northward from
+Harbor Weal to Harbor Woe. It was just under the ridge, in a sunny
+hollow among the rocks, on the southern slope of the great mountains.
+The earliest sunshine found the place and warmed it, bringing forth the
+bluebells for a carpet, while in every dark hollow the snow lingered all
+summer long, making dazzling white patches on the mountain; and under
+the high waterfalls, that looked from the harbor like bits of silver
+ribbon stretched over the green woods, the ice clung to the rocks in
+fantastic knobs and gargoyles, making cold, deep pools for the trout to
+play in. So it was both cool and warm there, and whatever the weather
+the gaunt old mother wolf could always find just the right spot to sleep
+away the afternoon. Best of all it was perfectly safe; for though from
+the door of her den she could look down on the old Indian's cabin, like
+a pebble on the shore, so steep were the billowing hills and so
+impassable the ravines that no human foot ever trod the place, not even
+in autumn when the fishermen left their boats at anchor in Harbor Weal
+and camped inland on the paths of the big caribou herds.
+
+Whether or not the father wolf ever knew where his cubs were hidden only
+he himself could tell. He was an enormous brute, powerful and cunning
+beyond measure, that haunted the lonely thickets and ponds bordering the
+great caribou barrens over the ridge, and that kept a silent watch,
+within howling distance, over the den which he never saw. Sometimes the
+mother wolf met him on her wanderings and they hunted together. Often he
+brought the game he had caught, a fox or a young goose; and sometimes
+when she had hunted in vain he met her, as if he had understood her need
+from a distance, and led her to where he had buried two or three of the
+rabbits that swarmed in the thickets. But spite of the attention and the
+indifferent watch which he kept, he never ventured near the den, which
+he could have found easily enough by following the mother's track. The
+old she-wolf would have flown at his throat like a fury had he showed
+his head over the top of the ridge.
+
+The reason for this was simple enough to the savage old mother, though
+there are some things about it that men do not yet understand. Wolves,
+like cats and foxes, and indeed like most wild male animals, have an
+atrocious way of killing their own young when they find them
+unprotected; so the mother animal searches out a den by herself and
+rarely allows the male to come near it. Spite of this beastly habit it
+must be said honestly of the old he-wolf that he shows a marvelous
+gentleness towards his mate. He runs at the slightest show of teeth from
+a mother wolf half his size, and will stand meekly a snap of the jaws or
+a cruel gash of the terrible fangs in his flank without defending
+himself. Even our hounds seem to have inherited something of this
+primitive wolf trait, for there are seasons when, unless urged on by
+men, they will not trouble a mother wolf or fox. Many times, in the
+early spring, when foxes are mating, and again later when they are heavy
+with young and incapable of a hard run, I have caught my hounds trotting
+meekly after a mother fox, sniffing her trail indifferently and sitting
+down with heads turned aside when she stops for a moment to watch and
+yap at them disdainfully. And when you call them they come shamefaced;
+though in winter-time, when running the same fox to death, they pay no
+more heed to your call than to the crows clamoring over them. But we
+must return to Wayeeses, sitting over her den on a great gray rock,
+trying every breeze, searching every movement, harking to every chirp
+and rustle before bringing her cubs out into the world.
+
+Satisfied at last with her silent investigation she turned her head
+towards the den. There was no sound, only one of those silent, unknown
+communications that pass between animals. Instantly there was a
+scratching, scurrying, whining, and three cubs tumbled out of the dark
+hole in the rocks, with fuzzy yellow fur and bright eyes and sharp ears
+and noses, like collies, all blinking and wondering and suddenly silent
+at the big bright world which they had never seen before, so different
+from the dark den under the rocks.
+
+Indeed it was a marvelous world that the little cubs looked upon when
+they came out to blink and wonder in the June sunshine. Contrasts
+everywhere, that made the world seem too big for one little glance to
+comprehend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and quivered on
+the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud shadows rested for hours, as if
+asleep, or swept over the mountain side in an endless game of
+fox-and-geese with the sunbeams. Here the birds trilled, the bees hummed
+in the bluebells, the brook roared and sang on its way to the sea; while
+over all the harmony of the world brooded a silence too great to be
+disturbed. Sunlight and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines and
+dazzling mountain tops, mayflowers and singing birds and rustling winds
+filled all the earth with color and movement and melody. From under
+their very feet great masses of rock, tossed and tumbled as by a giant's
+play, stretched downwards to where the green woods began and rolled in
+vast billows to the harbor, which shone and sparkled in the sun, yet
+seemed no bigger than their mother's paw. Fishing-boats with shining
+sails hovered over it, like dragon-flies, going and coming from the
+little houses that sheltered together under the opposite mountain, like
+a cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine stump. Most wonderful,
+most interesting of all was the little gray hut on the shore, almost
+under their feet, where little Noel and the Indian children played with
+the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the fishermen
+in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf cubs are like collies in this, that they
+seem to have a natural interest, perhaps a natural kinship with man, and
+next to their own kind nothing arouses their interest like a group of
+children playing.
+
+So the little cubs took their first glimpse of the big world, of
+mountains and sea and sunshine, and children playing on the shore, and
+the world was altogether too wonderful for little heads to comprehend.
+Nevertheless one plain impression remained, the same that you see in the
+ears and nose and stumbling feet and wagging tail of every puppy-dog you
+meet on the streets, that this bright world is a famous place, just made
+a-purpose for little ones to play in. Sitting on their tails in a solemn
+row the wolf cubs bent their heads and pointed their noses gravely at
+the sea. There it was, all silver and blue and boundless, with tiny
+white sails dancing over it, winking and flashing like entangled bits of
+sunshine; and since the eyes of a cub, like those of a little child,
+cannot judge distances, one stretched a paw at the nearest sail, miles
+away, to turn it over and make it go the other way. They turned up their
+heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite,
+with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one
+stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to
+pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near
+them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday,
+and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took
+to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over each
+other, while the gaunt old mother wolf looked down from her rock and
+watched and was satisfied.
+
+
+
+_Noel and Mooka_
+
+Down on the shore, that same bright June afternoon, little Noel and his
+sister Mooka were going on wonderful sledge journeys, meeting wolves and
+polar bears and caribou and all sorts of adventures, more wonderful by
+far than any that ever came to imagination astride of a rocking-horse.
+They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the
+rest,--five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a
+tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a
+bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand,
+waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside,
+cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar! Hiya, Wolf! Hi, hiya,
+hiya, yeeee!"--and then shrieking with laughter as the sledge overturned
+and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness,
+just like the husky dogs in winter. Mooka was trying to untangle them,
+dancing about to keep her bare toes and fingers away from the nipping
+claws, when she jumped up with a yell, the biggest crab hanging to the
+end of her finger.
+
+"Owee! oweeeee! Caesar bit me," she wailed. Then she stopped, with
+finger in her mouth, while Caesar scrambled headlong into the tide; for
+Noel was standing on the beach pointing at a brown sail far down in the
+deep bay, where Southeast Brook came singing from the green wilderness.
+
+"Ohe, Mooka! there's father and Old Tomah come back from salmon
+fishing."
+
+"Let's go meet um, little brother," said Mooka, her black eyes dancing;
+and in a wink crabs and sledges were forgotten. The old punt was off in
+a shake, the tattered sail up, skipper Noel lounging in the stern, like
+an old salt, with the steering oar, while the crew, forgetting her
+nipped finger, tugged valiantly at the main-sheet.
+
+They were scooting away gloriously, rising and pounding the waves, when
+Mooka, who did not have to steer and whose restless glance was roving
+over every bay and hillside, jumped up, her eyes round as lynx's.
+
+"Look, Noel, look! There's Megaleep again watching us." And Noel,
+following her finger, saw far up on the mountain a stag caribou, small
+and fine and clear as a cameo against the blue sky, where they had so
+often noticed him with wonder watching them as they came shouting home
+with the tide. Instantly Noel threw himself against the steering oar;
+the punt came up floundering and shaking in the wind.
+
+"Come on, little sister; we can go up Fox Brook. Tomah showed me trail."
+And forgetting the salmon, as they had a moment before forgotten the
+crabs and sledges, these two children of the wild, following every
+breeze and bird call and blossoming bluebell and shining star alike,
+tumbled ashore and went hurrying up the brook, splashing through the
+shallows, darting like kingfishers over the points, and jumping like
+wild goats from rock to rock. In an hour they were far up the mountain,
+lying side by side on a great flat rock, looking across a deep
+impassable valley and over two rounded hilltops, where the scrub spruces
+looked like pins on a cushion, to the bare, rugged hillside where
+Megaleep stood out like a watchman against the blue sky.
+
+"Does he see us, little brother?" whispered Mooka, quivering with
+excitement and panting from the rapid climb.
+
+"See us? sartin, little sister; but that only make him want peek um some
+more," said the little hunter. And raised carelessly on his elbows he
+was telling Mooka how Megaleep the caribou trusted only his nose, and
+how he watched and played peekaboo with anything which he could not
+smell, and how in a snowstorm--
+
+Noel was off now like a brook, babbling a deal of caribou lore which he
+had learned from Old Tomah the hunter, when Mooka, whose restless black
+eyes were always wandering, seized his arm.
+
+"Hush, brother, and look, oh, look! there on the big rock!"
+
+Noel's eyes had already caught the Indian trick of seeing only what they
+look for, and so of separating an animal instantly from his
+surroundings, however well he hides. That is why the whole hillside
+seemed suddenly to vanish, spruces and harebells, snow-fields and
+drifting white clouds all grouping themselves, like the unnoticed frame
+of a picture, around a great gray rock with a huge shaggy she-wolf
+keeping watch over it, silent, alert, motionless.
+
+Something stirred in the shadow of the old wolf's watch-tower, tossing
+and eddying and growing suddenly quiet, as if the wind were playing
+among dead oak leaves. The keen young eyes saw it instantly, dilating
+with surprise and excitement. The next instant they had clutched each
+other's arms.
+
+"Ooooo!" from Mooka.
+
+"Cubs; keep still!" from Noel.
+
+And shrinking close to the rock under a friendly dwarf spruce they lay
+still as two rabbits, watching with round eyes, eager but unafraid, the
+antics of three brown wolf cubs that were chasing the flies and tumbling
+over some invisible plaything before the door of the den.
+
+Hardly had they made the discovery when the old wolf slipped down from
+the rock and stood for an instant over her little ones. Why the play
+should stop now, while the breeze was still their comrade and the
+sunshine was brighter than ever, or why they should steal away into the
+dark den more silently than they had come, none of the cubs could tell.
+They felt the order and they obeyed instantly--and that is always the
+wonder of watching little wild things at play. The old mother wolf
+vanished among the rocks and appeared again higher on the ridge, turning
+her head uneasily to try every breeze and rustle and moving shadow. Then
+she went questing into the spruce woods, feeling but not understanding
+some subtle excitement in the air that was not there before, and only
+the two Indian children were left keeping watch over the great wild
+hillside.
+
+For over an hour they lay there expectantly, but nothing stirred near
+the den; then they too slipped away, silently as the little wild things,
+and made their slow way down the brook, hand in hand in the deepening
+shadows. Scarcely had they gone when the bushes stirred and the old
+she-wolf, that had been ranging every ridge and valley since she
+disappeared at the unknown alarm, glided over the spot where a moment
+before Mooka and Noel had been watching. Swiftly, silently she followed
+their steps; found the old trails coming up and the fresh trails
+returning; then, sure at last that no danger threatened her own little
+ones, she loped away up the hill and over the topmost ridge to the
+caribou barrens and the thickets where young rabbits were already
+stirring about in the twilight.
+
+That night, in the cabin under the cliffs, Old Tomah had to rehearse
+again all the wolf lore learned in sixty years of hunting: how,
+fortunately for the deer, these enormous wolves had never been abundant
+and were now very rare, a few having been shot, and more poisoned in the
+starving times, and the rest having vanished, mysteriously as wolves do,
+for some unknown reason. Bears, which are easily trapped and shot and
+whose skins are worth each a month's wages to the fishermen, still hold
+their own and even increase on the great island; while the wolves, once
+more numerous, are slowly vanishing, though they are never hunted, and
+not even Old Tomah himself could set a trap cunningly enough to catch
+one. The old hunter told, while Mooka and Noel held their breaths and
+drew closer to the light, how once, when he made his camp alone under a
+cliff on the lake shore, seven huge wolves, white as the snow, came
+racing swift and silent over the ice straight at the fire which he had
+barely time to kindle; how he shot two, and the others, seizing the fish
+he had just caught through the ice for his own supper, vanished over the
+bank; and he could not say even now whether they meant him harm or no.
+Again, as he talked and the grim old face lighted up at the memory, they
+saw him crouched with his sledge-dogs by a blazing fire all the long
+winter night, and around him in the darkness blazing points of light,
+the eyes of wolves flashing back the firelight, and gaunt white forms
+flitting about like shadows, drawing nearer and nearer with ever-growing
+boldness till they seized his largest dog--though the brute lay so near
+the fire that his hair singed--and whisked it away with an appalling
+outcry. And still again, when Tomah was lost three days in the interior,
+they saw him wandering with his pack over endless barrens and through
+gloomy spruce woods, and near him all the time a young wolf that
+followed his steps quietly, with half-friendly interest, and came no
+nearer day or night.
+
+All these things and many more the children heard from Old Tomah, and
+among all his hunting experiences and the stories and legends which he
+told them there was not one to make them afraid. For the horrible story
+of Red Riding Hood is not known among the Indians, who know well how
+untrue the tale is to wolf nature, and how foolish it is to frighten
+children with false stories of wolves and bears, misrepresenting them as
+savage and bloodthirsty brutes, when in truth they are but shy,
+peace-loving animals, whose only motive toward man, except when crazed
+by wounds or hunger, is one of childish curiosity. All these ferocious
+animal stories have their origin in other centuries and in distant
+lands, where they may possibly have been true, but more probably are
+just as false to animal nature; for they seem to reflect not the shy
+animal that men glimpsed in the woods, but rather the boastings of some
+hunter, who always magnifies his own praise by increasing the ferocity
+of the game he has killed, or else the pure imagination of some ancient
+nurse who tried to increase her scant authority by frightening her
+children with terrible tales. Here certainly the Indian attitude of
+kinship, gained by long centuries of living near to the animals and
+watching them closely, comes nearer to the truth of things. That is why
+little Mooka and Noel could listen for hours to Old Tomah's animal
+stories and then go away to bed and happy dreams, longing for the light
+so that they might be off again to watch at the wolf's den.
+
+One thing only disturbed them for a moment. Even these children had wolf
+memories and vied with Old Tomah in eagerness of telling. They
+remembered one fearful winter, years ago, when most of the families of
+the little fishing village on the East Harbor had moved far inland to
+sheltered cabins in the deep woods to escape the cold and the fearful
+blizzards of the coast. One still moonlit night, when the snow lay deep
+and the cold was intense and all the trees were cracking like pistols in
+the frost, a mournful howling rose all around their little cabin. Light
+footfalls sounded on the crust; there were scratchings at the very door
+and hoarse breathings at every crack; while the dogs, with hackles up
+straight and stiff on their necks, fled howling under beds and tables.
+And when Mooka and Noel went fearfully with their mother to the little
+window--for the men were far away on a caribou hunt--there were gaunt
+white wolves, five or six of them, flitting restlessly about in the
+moonlight, scratching at the cracks and even raising themselves on their
+hind legs to look in at the little windows.
+
+Mooka shivered a bit when she remembered the uncanny scene, and felt
+again the strong pressure of her mother's arms holding her close; but
+Old Tomah brushed away her fears with a smile and a word, as he had
+always done when, as little children, they had showed fear at the
+thunder or the gale or the cry of a wild beast in the night, till they
+had grown to look upon all Nature's phenomena as hiding a smile as
+kindly as that of Old Tomah himself, who had a face wrinkled and
+terribly grim, to be sure, but who could smile and tell a story so that
+every child trusted him. The wolves were hungry, starving hungry, he
+said, and wanted only a dog, or one of the pigs. And Mooka remembered
+with a bright laugh the two unruly pigs that had been taken inland as a
+hostage to famine, and that must be carefully guarded from the teeth of
+hungry prowlers, for they would soon be needed to keep the children
+themselves from starving. Every night at early sunset, when the trees
+began to groan and the keen winds from the mountains came whispering
+through the woods, the two pigs were taken into the snug kitchen, where
+with the dogs they slept so close to the stove that she could always
+smell pork a-frying. Not a husky dog there but would have killed and
+eaten one of these little pigs if he could have caught him around the
+corner of the house after nightfall, though you would never have
+suspected it if you had seen them so close together, keeping each other
+warm after the fire went out. And besides the dogs and the wolves there
+were lynxes--big, round-headed, savage-looking creatures--that came
+prowling out of the deep woods every night, hungry for a taste of the
+little pigs; and now and then an enormous polar bear, that had landed
+from an iceberg, would shuffle swiftly and fearlessly among the handful
+of little cabins, leaving his great footprints in every yard and tearing
+to pieces, as if made of straw, the heavy log pens to which some of the
+fishermen had foolishly confided their pigs or sheep. He even entered
+the woodsheds and rummaged about after a stray fishbone or an old
+sealskin boot, making a great rowdydow in the still night; and only the
+smell of man, or the report of an old gun fired at him by some brave
+woman out of the half-open window, kept him from pushing his enormous
+weight against the very doors of the cabins.
+
+Thinking of all these things, Mooka forgot her fears of the white
+wolves, remembering with a kind of sympathy how hungry all these shy
+prowlers must be to leave their own haunts, whence the rabbits and seals
+had vanished, and venture boldly into the yards of men. As for Noel, he
+remembered with regret that he was too small at the time to use the long
+bow which he now carried on his rabbit and goose hunts; and as he took
+it from the wall, thrumming its chord of caribou sinew and fingering the
+sharp edge of a long arrow, he was hoping for just such another winter,
+longing to try his skill and strength on some of these midnight
+prowlers--a lynx, perhaps, not to begin too largely on a polar bear. So
+there was no fear at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed
+up the brook next day to watch at the wolf's den. And even when Noel
+found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog's,
+in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently
+following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed
+Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.
+
+Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under
+the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side
+they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more
+interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding
+the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in
+wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also
+something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down
+gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters. Once they
+brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and
+through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was
+larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear,
+like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.
+Mooka claimed that wolf instantly for her own, as if they were watching
+the husky puppies, and by his broken ear said she should know him again
+when he grew to be a big wolf, if he should ever follow her, as his
+father perhaps had followed Old Tomah; but Noel, thinking of his bow and
+his long arrow with the sharp point, thought of the winter night long
+ago and hoped that his two wolves would know enough to keep away when
+the pack came again, for he did not see any way to recognize and spare
+them, especially in the moonlight. So they lay there making plans and
+dreaming dreams, gentle or savage, for the little cubs that played with
+the feathers and grasshoppers and cloud shadows, all unconscious that
+any eyes but their mother's saw or cared for their wild, free playing.
+
+[Illustration: "Watching her growing youngsters"]
+
+Something bothered the old she-wolf in these days of watching. The den
+was still secure, for no human foot had crossed the deep ravine or
+ventured nearer than the opposite hilltop. Her nose told her that
+unmistakably; but still she was uneasy, and whenever the cubs were
+playing she felt, without knowing why, that she was being watched. When
+she trailed over all the ridges in the twilight, seeking to know if
+enemies had been near, she found always the scent of two human beings on
+a flat rock under the dwarf spruces; and there were always the two
+trails coming up and going down the brook. She followed once close
+behind the two children, seeing them plainly all the way, till they came
+in sight of the little cabin under the cliff, and from the door her
+enemy man came out to meet them. For these two little ones, whose trail
+she knew, the old she-wolf, like most mother animals in the presence of
+children, felt no fear nor enmity whatever. But they watched her den and
+her own little ones, that was sure enough; and why should any one watch
+a den except to enter some time and destroy? That is a question which no
+mother wolf could ever answer; for the wild animals, unlike dogs and
+blue jays and men, mind strictly their own business and pay no attention
+to other animals. They hate also to be watched; for the thought of
+watching always suggests to their minds that which follows,--the hunt,
+the rush, the wild break-away, and the run for life. Had she not herself
+watched a hundred times at the rabbit's form, the fox's runway, the deer
+path, the wild-goose nest? What could she expect for her own little
+ones, therefore, when the man cubs, beings of larger reach and unknown
+power, came daily to watch at her den?
+
+All this unanswered puzzle must have passed through the old wolf's head
+as she trotted up the brook away from the Indian cabin in the twilight.
+When in doubt trust your fears,--that is wolf wisdom in a nutshell; and
+that marks the difference between a wolf and a caribou, for instance,
+which in doubt trusts his nose or his curiosity. So the old wolf took
+counsel of her fears for her little ones, and that night carried them
+one by one in her mouth, as a cat carries her kittens, miles away over
+rocks and ravines and spruce thickets, to another den where no human eye
+ever looked upon their play.
+
+"Shall we see them again, little brother?" said Mooka wistfully, when
+they had climbed to their watch-tower for the third time and seen
+nothing. And Noel made confident answer:
+
+"Oh, yes, we see um again, lil sister. Wayeeses got um wandering foot;
+go 'way off long ways; bimeby come back on same trail. He jus' like
+Injun, like um old camp best. Oh, yes, sartin we see um again." But
+Noel's eyes looked far away as he spoke, and in his heart he was
+thinking of his bow and his long arrow with the sharp point, and of a
+moonlit night with white shapes flitting noiselessly over the snow and
+scratching at the door of the little cabin.
+
+
+
+_The Way of The Wolf_
+
+A new experience had come to the little wolf cubs in a single
+night,--the experience of fear. For weeks they had lain hid in the dark
+den, or played fearlessly in the bright sunshine, guarded and kept at
+every moment, day or night, by the gaunt old mother wolf that was their
+only law, their only companion. At times they lay for hours hungry and
+restless, longing to go out into the bright world, yet obeying a
+stronger will than their own, even at a distance. For, once a wild
+mother in her own dumb way has bidden her little ones lie still, they
+rarely stir from the spot, refusing even to be dragged away from the
+nest or den, knowing well the punishment in store if she return and find
+them absent. Moreover, it is useless to dissimulate, to go out and play
+and then to be sleeping innocently with the cubs when the old wolf's
+shadow darkens the entrance. No concealment is possible from wolf's
+nose; before she enters the den the mother knows perfectly all that has
+happened since she went away. So the days glided by peacefully between
+sleep and play, the cubs trusting absolutely in the strength and
+tenderness that watched over them, the mother building the cubs' future
+on the foundation of the two instincts which are strong in every wild
+creature born into a world of danger,--the instinct to lie still and let
+nature's coloring hide all defenseless little ones, and the instinct to
+obey instantly a stronger will than their own.
+
+There was no fear as yet, only instinctive wariness; for fear comes
+largely from others' example, from alarms and excitement and cries of
+danger, which only the grown animals understand. The old wolf had been
+undisturbed; no dog or hunter had chased her; no trap or pitfall had
+entangled her swift feet. Moreover, she had chosen her den well, where
+no man had ever stood, and where only the eyes of two children had seen
+her at a distance. So the little ones grew and played in the sunshine,
+and had yet to learn what fear meant.
+
+One day at dusk the mother entered swiftly and, without giving them food
+as she had always done, seized a cub and disappeared. For the little
+one, which had never before ventured beyond sight of the den, it was a
+long journey indeed that followed,--miles and miles beside roaring
+brooks and mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light
+entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his
+ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother's great jaws. An
+owl hooted dismally, _whoo-hooo!_ and though he knew the sound well in
+his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver. The wind went
+sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird chirped
+and whirred away out of their path; the brook roared among the rocks; a
+big salmon jumped and tumbled back with resounding splash, and jumped
+again as if the otter were after him. There was a sudden sharp cry, the
+first and last voice of a hare when the weasel rises up in front of him;
+then silence, and the fitful rustle of his mother's pads moving
+steadily, swiftly over dry leaves. And all these sounds of the
+wilderness night spoke to the little cub of some new thing, of swift
+feet that follow and of something unknown and terrible that waits for
+all unwary wild things. So fear was born.
+
+The long journey ended at last before a dark hole in the hillside; and
+the smell of his mother, the only familiar thing in his first strange
+pilgrimage, greeted the cub from the rocks on either side as he passed
+in out of the starlight. He was dropped without a sound in a larger den,
+on some fresh-gathered leaves and dead grass, and lay there all alone,
+very still, with the new feeling trembling all over him. A long hour
+passed; a second cub was laid beside him, and the mother vanished as
+before; another hour, and the wolf cubs were all together again with the
+mother feeding them. Nor did any of them know where they were, nor why
+they had come, nor the long, long way that led back to where the trail
+began.
+
+Next day when they were called out to play they saw a different and more
+gloomy landscape, a chaos of granite rocks, a forest of evergreen, the
+white plunge and rolling mist of a mountain torrent; but no silver sea
+with fishing-boats drifting over it, like clouds in the sea over their
+heads, and no gray hut with children running about like ants on the
+distant shore. And as they played they began for the first time to
+imitate the old mother keeping guard over them, sitting up often to
+watch and listen and sift the winds, trying to understand what fear was,
+and why they had been taken away from the sunny hillside where the world
+was so much bigger and brighter than here. But home is where mother
+is,--that, fortunately, is also true of the little Wood Folk, who
+understand it in their own savage way for a season,--and in their wonder
+at their new surroundings the memory of the old home gradually faded
+away. They never knew with what endless care the new den had been
+chosen; how the mother, in the days when she knew she was watched, had
+searched it out and watched over it and put her nose to every ridge and
+ravine and brook-side, day after day, till she was sure that no foot
+save that of the wild things had touched the soil within miles of the
+place. They felt only a greater wildness, a deeper solitude; and they
+never forgot, though they were unmolested, the strange feeling that was
+born in them on that first terrifying night journey in their mother's
+jaws.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon the food that was brought home at dawn--the rabbit or grouse, or
+the bunch of rats hanging by their tails, with which the mother
+supplemented their midday drink of milk--became altogether too scant to
+satisfy their clamorous appetites; and in the bright afternoons and the
+long summer twilights the mother led them forth on short journeys to
+hunt for themselves. No big caribou or cunning fox cub, as one might
+suppose, but "rats and mice and such small deer" were the limit of the
+mother's ambition for her little ones. They began on stupid grubs that
+one could find asleep under stones and roots, and then on beetles that
+scrambled away briskly at the first alarm, and then, when the sunshine
+was brightest, on grasshoppers,--lively, wary fellows that zipped and
+buzzed away just when you were sure you had them, and that generally
+landed from an astounding jump facing in a different direction, like a
+flea, so as to be ready for your next move.
+
+It was astonishing how quickly the cubs learned that game is not to be
+picked up tamely, like huckleberries, and changed their style of
+hunting,--creeping, instead of trotting openly so that even a porcupine
+must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till
+the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on
+a ptarmigan. A wolf that cannot catch a grasshopper has no business
+hunting rabbits--this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led the
+old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was
+hiding plentifully and take her cubs to the dry, sunny plains on the
+edge of the caribou barrens. There for hours at a time they hunted
+elusive grasshoppers, rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping
+up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or
+snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a
+back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their
+heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like
+exclamation points, to find another grasshopper.
+
+Small business indeed and often ludicrous, this playing at grasshopper
+hunting. So it seems to us; so also, perhaps, to the wise old mother,
+which knew all the ways of game, from crickets to caribou and from
+ground sparrows to wild geese. But play is the first great
+educator,--that is as true of animals as of men,--and to the cubs their
+rough helter-skelter after hoppers was as exciting as a stag hunt to the
+pack, as full of surprises as the wild chase through the soft snow after
+a litter of lynx kittens. And though they knew it not, they were
+learning things every hour of the sunny, playful afternoons that they
+would remember and find useful all the days of their life.
+
+So the funny little hunt went on, the mother watching gravely under a
+bush where she was inconspicuous, and the cubs, full of zest and
+inexperience, missing the flying tidbits more often than they swallowed
+them, until they learned at last to locate all game accurately before
+chasing or alarming it; and that is the rule, learned from hunting
+grasshoppers, which a wolf follows ever afterward. Even after they knew
+just where the grasshopper was hiding, watching them after a jump, and
+leaped upon him swiftly from a distance, he often got away when they
+lifted their paws to eat him. For the grasshopper was not dead under the
+light paw, as they supposed, but only pressed into the moss waiting for
+his chance to jump. Then the cubs learned another lesson: to hold their
+game down with both paws pressed closely together, inserting their noses
+like a wedge and keeping every crack of escape shut tight until they had
+the slippery morsel safe under their back teeth. And even then it was
+deliciously funny to watch their expression as they chewed, opening
+their jaws wide as if swallowing a rabbit, snapping them shut again as
+the grasshopper wiggled; and always with a doubt in their close-set
+eyes, a questioning twist of head and ears, as if they were not quite
+sure whether or not they were really eating him.
+
+Another suggestive thing came out in these hunts, which you must notice
+whether you watch wolves or coyotes or a den of fox cubs. Though no
+sound came from the watchful old mother, the cubs seemed at every
+instant under absolute control. One would rush away pell-mell after a
+hopper, miss him and tumble away again, till he was some distance from
+the busy group on the edge of the big lonely barren. In the midst of his
+chase the mother would raise her head and watch the cub intently. No
+sound was uttered that human ears could hear; but the chase ended right
+there, on the instant, and the cub came trotting back like a well-broken
+setter at the whistle. It was marvelous beyond comprehension, this
+absolute authority and this silent command that brought a wolf back
+instantly from the wildest chase, and that kept the cubs all together
+under the watchful eyes that followed every movement. No wonder wolves
+are intelligent in avoiding every trap and in hunting together to outwit
+some fleet-footed quarry with unbelievable cunning. Here on the edge of
+the vast, untrodden barren, far from human eyes, in an ordinary family
+of wolf cubs playing wild and free, eager, headstrong, hungry, yet
+always under control and instantly subject to a wiser head and a
+stronger will than their own, was the explanation of it all. Later, in
+the bitter, hungry winter, when a big caribou was afoot and the pack hot
+on his trail, the cubs would remember the lesson, and every free wolf
+would curb his hunger, obeying the silent signal to ease the game and
+follow slowly while the leader raced unseen through the woods to head
+the game and lie in ambush by the distant runway.
+
+From grasshoppers the cubs took to hunting the wood-mice that nested in
+the dry moss and swarmed on the edges of every thicket. This was keener
+hunting; for the wood-mouse moves like a ray of light, and always makes
+at least one false start to mislead any that may be watching for him.
+The cubs soon learned that when Tookhees appeared and dodged back again,
+as if frightened, it was not because he had seen them, but just because
+he always appears that way. So they crouched and hid, like a cat, and
+when a gray streak shot over the gray moss and vanished in a tuft of
+grass they leaped for the spot--and always found it vacant. For Tookhees
+always doubles on his trail, or burrows for a distance under the moss,
+and never hides where he disappears. It took the cubs a long while to
+find that out; and then they would creep and watch and listen till they
+could locate the game by a stir under the moss, and pounce upon it and
+nose it out from between their paws, just as they had done with the
+grasshoppers. And when they crunched it at last like a ripe plum under
+their teeth it was a delicious tidbit, worth all the trouble they had
+taken to get it. For your wolf, unlike the ferocious, grandmother-eating
+creature of the nursery, is at heart a peaceable fellow, most at home
+and most happy when mouse hunting.
+
+There was another kind of this mouse chasing which furnished better
+sport and more juicy mouthfuls to the young cubs. Here and there on the
+Newfoundland mountains the snow lingers all summer long. In every
+northern hollow of the hills you see, from a distance, white patches no
+bigger than your hat sparkling in the sun; but when you climb there,
+after bear or caribou, you find great snow-fields, acres in extent and
+from ten to a hundred feet deep, packed close and hard with the pressure
+of a thousand winters. Often when it rains in the valleys, and raises
+the salmon rivers to meet your expectations, a thin covering of new snow
+covers these white fields; and then, if you go there, you will find the
+new page written all over with the feet of birds and beasts. The mice
+especially love these snow-fields for some unknown reason. All along the
+edges you find the delicate, lacelike tracery which shows where little
+feet have gone on busy errands or played together in the moonlight; and
+if you watch there awhile you will surely see Tookhees come out of the
+moss and scamper across a bit of snow and dive back to cover under the
+moss again, as if he enjoyed the feeling of the cold snow under his feet
+in the summer sunshine. He has tunnels there, too, going down to solid
+ice, where he hides things to keep which would spoil if left in the heat
+of his den under the mossy stone, and when food is scarce he draws upon
+these cold-storage rooms; but most of his summer snow journeys, if one
+may judge from watching him and from following his tracks, are taken for
+play or comfort, just as the bull caribou comes up to lie in the snow,
+with the strong sea wind in his face, to escape the flies which swarm in
+the thickets below. Owl and hawk, fox and weasel and wildcat,--all the
+prowlers of the day and night have long since discovered these good
+hunting-grounds and leave the prints of wing and claw over the records
+of the wood-mice; but still Tookhees returns, led by his love of the
+snow-fields, and thrives and multiplies spite of all his enemies.
+
+One moonlit night the old wolf took her cubs to the edge of one of these
+snow-fields, where the eager eyes soon noticed dark streaks shooting
+hither and yon over the bare white surface. At first they chased them
+wildly; but one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, which has not so
+many places to hide as a wood-mouse. Then, remembering the grasshoppers,
+they crouched and crept and so caught a few. Meanwhile old mother wolf
+lay still in hiding, contenting herself with snapping up the game that
+came to her, instead of chasing it wildly all over the snow-field. The
+example was not lost; for imitation is strong among intelligent animals,
+and most of what they learn is due simply to following the mother. Soon
+the cubs were still, one lying here under shadow of a bush, another
+there by a gray rock that lifted its head out of the snow. As a dark
+streak moved nervously by one of these hiding-places there would be a
+rush, a snap, the _pchap pchap_ of jaws crunching a delicious morsel;
+then all quiet again, with only gray, innocent-looking shadows resting
+softly on the snow. So they moved gradually along the edges of the great
+white field; and next morning the tracks were all there, plain as
+daylight, telling their silent story of good hunting.
+
+To vary their diet the mother now took them down to the shore to hunt
+among the rocks for ducks' eggs. They were there by the hundreds,
+scattered along the lonely bays just above high-water line, where the
+eiders had their nests.
+
+At first old mother wolf showed them where to look, and when she had
+found a clutch of eggs would divide them fairly, keeping the hungry cubs
+in order at a little distance and bringing each one his share, which he
+ate without interference. Then when they understood the thing they
+scattered nimbly to hunt for themselves, and the real fun began.
+
+Now a cub, poking his nose industriously into every cranny and under
+every thick bush, would find a great roll of down plucked from the
+mother bird's breast, and scraping the top off carefully with his paw,
+would find five or six large pale-green eggs, which he gobbled down,
+shells, ducklings and all, before another cub should smell the good find
+and caper up to share it. Again he would be startled out of his wits as
+a large brown bird whirred and fluttered away from under his very nose.
+Sitting on his tail he would watch her with comical regret and longing
+till she tumbled into the tide and drifted swiftly away out of danger;
+then, remembering what he came for, he would turn and follow her trail
+back to the nest out of which she had stolen at his approach, and find
+the eggs all warm for his breakfast. And when he had eaten all he wanted
+he would take an egg in his mouth and run about uneasily here and there,
+like a dog with a bone when he thinks he is watched, till he had made a
+sad crisscross of his trail and found a spot where none could see him.
+There he would dig a hole and bury his egg and go back for more; and on
+his way would meet another cub running about with an egg in his mouth,
+looking for a spot where no one would notice him.
+
+From mice and eggs the young cubs turned to rabbits and hares; and these
+were their staple food ever afterward when other game was scarce and the
+wood-mice were hidden deep under the winter snows, safe at last for a
+little season from all their enemies. Here for the first time the father
+wolf appeared, coming in quietly one late afternoon, as if he knew, as
+he probably did, just when he was needed. Beyond a glance he paid no
+attention whatever to the cubs, only taking his place opposite the
+mother as the wolves started abreast in a long line to beat the thicket.
+
+By night the cubs had already caught several rabbits, snapping them up
+as they played heedlessly in the moonlight, just as they had done with
+the wood-mice. By day, however, the hunting was entirely different. Then
+the hares and rabbits are resting in their hidden forms under the ferns,
+or in a hollow between the roots of a brown stump. 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. If a cub succeeded, and snapped up a
+rabbit before the surprised creature had time to gather headway, he
+dropped behind with his catch, while the rest went slowly, carefully, on
+through the cover. If he failed, as was generally the case at first, a
+curious bit of wolf intelligence and wolf training came out at once.
+
+As the wolves advanced the father and mother would steal gradually ahead
+at either end of the line, rarely hunting themselves, but drawing the
+nearest cub's attention to any game they had discovered, and then moving
+silently to one side and a little ahead to watch the result. When the
+cub rushed and missed, and the startled rabbit went flying away,
+whirling to left or right as rabbits always do, there would be a
+lightning change at the end of the line. A terrific rush, a snap of the
+long jaws like a steel trap,--then the old wolf would toss back the
+rabbit with a broken back, for the cub to finish him. Not till the cubs
+first, and then the mother, had satisfied their hunger would the old
+he-wolf hunt for himself. Then he would disappear, and they would not
+see him for days at a time, until food was scarce and they needed him
+once more.
+
+One day, when the cubs were hungry and food scarce because of their
+persistent hunting near the den, the mother brought them to the edge of
+a dense thicket where rabbits were plentiful enough, but where the cover
+was so thick that they could not follow the frightened game for an
+instant. The old he-wolf had appeared at a distance and then vanished;
+and the cubs, trotting along behind the mother, knew nothing of what was
+coming or what was expected of them. They lay in hiding on the lee side
+of the thicket, each one crouching under a bush or root, with the mother
+off at one side perfectly hidden as usual.
+
+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. The cubs were filled with wonder. Such hunting was
+never seen before; for rabbits stirred abroad by day, and ran right into
+the hungry mouths instead of running away. Then, slinking along like a
+shadow and stopping to look back and sniff the wind, appeared a big red
+fox that had been sleeping away the afternoon on top of a stump in the
+center of the thicket.
+
+The old mother's eyes began to blaze as Eleemos drew near. There was a
+rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow
+as the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the
+fox turned to leap away. Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a
+flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had
+happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at
+his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling
+deep in their chests as the lust of their first fighting swept over
+them. Then in vague, vanishing glimpses the old he-wolf appeared,
+quartering swiftly, silently, back and forth through the thicket,
+driving every living thing down-wind to where the cubs and the mother
+were waiting to receive it.
+
+[Illustration: "As the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the
+back"]
+
+That one lesson was enough for the cubs, though years would pass before
+they could learn all the fine points of this beating the bush: to know
+almost at a glance where the game, whether grouse or hare or fox or
+lucivee, was hiding in the cover, and then for one wolf to drive it,
+slowly or swiftly as the case might require, while the other hid beside
+the most likely path of escape. A family of grouse must be coaxed along
+and never see what is driving them, else they will flit into a tree and
+be lost; while a cat must be startled out of her wits by a swift rush,
+and sent flying away before she can make up her stupid mind what the row
+is all about. A fox, almost as cunning as Wayeeses himself, must be made
+to think that some dog enemy is slowly puzzling out his cold trail;
+while a musquash searching for bake-apples, or a beaver going inland to
+cut wood for his winter supplies of bark, must not be driven, but be
+followed up swiftly by the path or canal by which he has ventured away
+from the friendly water.
+
+All these and many more things must be learned slowly at the expense of
+many failures, especially when the cubs took to hunting alone and the
+old wolves were not there to show them how; but they never forgot the
+principle taught in that first rabbit drive,--that two hunters are
+better than one to outwit any game when they hunt intelligently
+together. That is why you so often find wolves going in pairs; and when
+you study them or follow their tracks you discover that they play
+continually into each other's hands. They seem to share the spoil as
+intelligently as they catch it, the wolf that lies beside the runway and
+pulls down the game giving up a portion gladly to the companion that
+beats the bush, and rarely indeed is there any trace of quarreling
+between them.
+
+Like the eagles--which have long since learned the advantage of hunting
+in pairs and of scouting for game in single file--the wolves, when
+hunting deer on the open barrens where it is difficult to conceal their
+advance, always travel in files, one following close behind the other;
+so that, seen from in front where the game is watching, two or three
+wolves will appear like a lone animal trotting across the plain. That
+alarms the game far less at first; and not until the deer starts away
+does the second wolf appear, shooting out from behind the leader. The
+sight of another wolf appearing suddenly on his flank throws a young
+deer into a panic, in which he is apt to lose his head and be caught by
+the cunning hunters.
+
+Curiously enough, the plains Indians, who travel in the same way when
+hunting or scouting for enemies, first learned the trick--so an old
+chief told me, and it is one of the traditions of his people--from
+watching the timber wolves in their stealthy advance over the open
+places.
+
+The wolves were stealing through the woods all together, one late summer
+afternoon, having beaten a cover without taking anything, when the
+puzzled cubs suddenly found themselves alone. A moment before they had
+been trotting along with the old wolves, nosing every cranny and knot
+hole for mice and grubs, and stopping often for a roll and frolic, as
+young cubs do in the gladness of life; now they pressed close together,
+looking, listening, while a subtle excitement filled all the woods. For
+the old wolves had disappeared, shooting ahead in great, silent bounds,
+while the cubs waited with ears cocked and noses quivering, as if a
+silent command had been understood.
+
+The silence was intense; not a sound, not a stir in the quiet woods,
+which seemed to be listening with the cubs and to be filled with the
+same thrilling expectation. Suddenly the silence was broken by heavy
+plunges far ahead, _crash! bump! bump!_ and there broke forth such an
+uproar of yaps and howls as the cubs had never heard before. Instantly
+they broke away on the trail, joining their shrill yelpings to the
+clamor, so different from the ordinary stealthy wolf hunt, and filled
+with a nameless excitement which they did not at all understand till the
+reek of caribou poured into their hungry nostrils; whereupon they yelped
+louder than ever. But they did not begin to understand the matter till
+they caught glimpses of gray backs bounding hither and yon in the
+underbrush, while the two great wolves raced easily on either side,
+yapping sharply to increase the excitement, and guiding the startled,
+foolish deer as surely, as intelligently, as a pair of collies herd a
+flock of frightened sheep.
+
+When the cubs broke out of the dense cover at last they found the two
+old wolves sitting quietly on their tails before a rugged wall of rocks
+that stretched away on either hand at the base of a great bare hill. In
+front of them was a young cow caribou, threatening savagely with horns
+and hoofs, while behind her cowered two half-grown fawns crowded into a
+crevice of the rocks. Anger, rather than fear, blazed out in the
+mother's mild eyes. Now she turned swiftly to press her excited young
+ones back against the sheltering wall; now she whirled with a savage
+grunt and charged headlong at the wolves, which merely leaped aside and
+sat down silently again to watch the game, till the cubs raced out and
+hovered uneasily about with a thousand questions in every eye and ear
+and twitching nostril.
+
+The reason for the hunt was now plain enough. Up to this time the
+caribou had been let severely alone, though they were very numerous,
+scattered through the dense coverts in every valley and on every
+hillside. For Wayeeses is no wanton killer, as he is so often
+represented to be, but sticks to small game whenever he can find it, and
+leaves the deer unmolested. As for his motive in the matter, who shall
+say, since no one understands the half of what a wolf does every day?
+Perhaps it is a mere matter of taste, a preference for the smaller and
+more juicy tidbits; more likely it is a combination of instinct and
+judgment, with a possible outlook for the future unusual with beasts of
+prey. The moment the young wolves take to harrying the deer--as they
+invariably do if the mother wolf be not with them--the caribou leave the
+country. The herds become, moreover, so wild and suspicious after a very
+little wolf hunting that they are exceedingly difficult of approach; and
+there is no living thing on earth, not even a white wolf or a trained
+greyhound, that can tire or overtake a startled caribou. The swinging
+rack of these big white wanderers looks easy enough when you see it; but
+when the fleet staghounds are slipped, as has been more than once tested
+in Newfoundland, try as hard as they will they cannot keep within sight
+of the deer for a single quarter-mile, and no limit has ever yet been
+found, either by dog or wolf, to Megaleep's tirelessness. So the old
+wolves, relying possibly upon past experience, keep the cubs and hold
+themselves strictly to small game as long as it can possibly be found.
+Then when the bitter days of late winter come, with their scarcity of
+small game and their unbearable hunger, the wolves turn to the caribou
+as a last resort, killing a few here by stealth, rather than speed, and
+then, when the game grows wild, going far off to another range where the
+deer have not been disturbed and so can be approached more easily.
+
+On this afternoon, however, the old mother wolf had run plump upon the
+caribou and her fawns in the midst of a thicket, and had leaped forward
+promptly to round them up for her hungry cubs. It would have been the
+easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring one of the slow
+fawns, or the mother caribou herself as she hovered in the rear to
+defend her young; but there were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head
+that had seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the deer slowly,
+puzzling them more and more, as a collie distracts the herd by his
+yapping, out into the open where her cubs might join in the hunting.
+
+The wolves now drew back, all save the mother, which advanced
+hesitatingly to where the caribou stood with lowered head, watching
+every move. Suddenly the cow charged, so swiftly, furiously, that the
+old wolf seemed almost caught, and tumbled away with the broad hoofs
+striking savagely at her flanks. Farther and farther the caribou drove
+her enemy, roused now to frenzy at the wolf's nearness and apparent
+cowardice. Then she whirled in a panic and rushed back to her little
+ones, only to find that all the other wolves, as if frightened by her
+furious charge, had drawn farther back from the cranny in the rocks.
+
+Again the old she-wolf approached cautiously, and again the caribou
+plunged at her and followed her lame retreat with headlong fury. An
+electric shock seemed suddenly to touch the huge he-wolf. Like a flash
+he leaped in on the fawns. One quick snap of the long jaws with the
+terrible fangs; then, as if the whole thing were a bit of play, he loped
+away easily with the cubs, circling to join the mother wolf, which
+strangely enough did not return to the attack as the caribou charged
+back, driving the cubs and the old he-wolf away like a flock of sheep.
+The coast was now clear, not an enemy in the way; and the mother
+caribou, with a triumphant bleat to her fawns to follow, plunged back
+into the woods whence she had come.
+
+One fawn only followed her. The other took a step or two, sank to his
+knees, and rolled over on his side. When the wolves drew near quietly,
+without a trace of the ferocity or the howling clamor with which such
+scenes are usually pictured, the game was quite dead, one quick snap of
+the old wolf's teeth just behind the fore legs having pierced the heart
+more surely than a hunter's bullet. And the mother caribou, plunging
+wildly away through the brush with the startled fawn jumping at her
+heels, could not know that her mad flight was needless; that the
+terrible enemy which had spared her and let her go free had no need nor
+desire to follow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fat autumn had now come with its abundant fare, and the caribou were
+not again molested. Flocks of grouse and ptarmigan came out of the thick
+coverts, in which they had been hiding all summer, and began to pluck
+the berries of the open plains, where they could easily be waylaid and
+caught by the growing wolf cubs. Plover came in hordes, sweeping over
+the Straits from the Labrador; and when the wolves surrounded a flock of
+the queer birds and hitched nearer and nearer, sinking their gray bodies
+in the yielding gray moss till they looked like weather-worn logs, the
+hunting was full of tense excitement, though the juicy mouthfuls were
+few and far between. Fox cubs roamed abroad away from their mothers,
+self-willed and reveling in the abundance; and it was now easy for two
+of the young wolves to drive a fox out of his daytime cover and catch
+him as he stole away.
+
+After the plover came the ducks in myriads, filling the ponds and
+flashets of the vast barrens with tumultuous quacking; and the young
+wolves learned, like the foxes, to decoy the silly birds by rousing
+their curiosity. They would hide in the grass, while one played and
+rolled about on the open shore, till the ducks saw him and began to
+stretch their necks and gabble their amazement at the strange thing,
+which they had never seen before. Shy and wild as he naturally is, a
+duck, like a caribou or a turkey, must take a peek at every new thing.
+Now silent, now gabbling all together, the flock would veer and scatter
+and draw together again, and finally swing in toward the shore, every
+neck drawn straight as a string the better to see what was going on.
+Nearer and nearer they would come, till a swift rush out of the grass
+sent them off headlong, splashing and quacking with crazy clamor. But
+one or two always stayed behind with the wolves to pay the price of
+curiosity.
+
+Then there were the young geese, which gathered in immense flocks in the
+shallow bays, preparing and drilling for the autumn flight. Late in the
+afternoon the old mother wolf with her cubs would steal down through the
+woods, hiding and watching the flocks, and following them stealthily as
+they moved along the shore. At night the great flock would approach a
+sandbar, well out of the way of rocks and brush and everything that
+might hide an enemy, and go to sleep in close little family groups on
+the open shore. As the night darkened four shadows would lengthen out
+from the nearest bank of shadows, creeping onward to the sand-bar with
+the slow patience of the hours. A rush, a startled _honk!_ a terrific
+clamor of wings and throats and smitten water. Then the four shadows
+would rise up from the sand and trot back to the woods, each with a
+burden on its shoulders and a sparkle in the close-set eyes over the
+pointed jaws, which were closed on the neck of a goose, holding it tight
+lest any outcry escape to tell the startled flock what had happened.
+
+Besides this abundant game there were other good things to eat, and the
+cubs rarely dined of the same dish twice in succession. Salmon and big
+sea-trout swarmed now in every shallow of the clear brooks, and, after
+spawning, these fish were much weakened and could easily be caught by a
+little cunning. Every day and night the tide ebbed and flowed, and every
+tide left its contribution in windrows of dead herring and caplin, with
+scattered crabs and mussels for a relish, like plums in a pudding. A
+wolf had only to trot for a mile or two along the tide line of a lonely
+beach, picking up the good things which the sea had brought him, and
+then go back to sleep or play satisfied. And if Wayeeses wanted game to
+try his mettle and cunning, there were the big fat seals barking on the
+black rocks, and he had only to cut between them and the sea and throw
+himself upon the largest seal as the herd floundered ponderously back to
+safety. A wolf rarely grips and holds an enemy; he snaps and lets go,
+and snaps again at every swift chance; but here he must either hold fast
+or lose his big game; and what between holding and letting go, as the
+seals whirled with bared teeth and snapped viciously in turn, as they
+scrambled away to the sea, the wolves had a lively time of it. Often
+indeed, spite of three or four wolves, a big seal would tumble into the
+tide, where the sharks followed his bloody trail and soon finished him.
+
+Now for the first time the wolves, led by the rich abundance, began to
+kill more than they needed for food and to hide it away, like the
+squirrels, in anticipation of the coming winter. Like the blue and the
+Arctic foxes, a strange instinct to store things seems to stir dimly at
+times within them. Occasionally, instead of eating and sleeping after a
+kill, the cubs, led by the mother wolf, would hunt half of the day and
+night and carry all they caught to the snow-fields. There each one would
+search out a cranny in the rocks and hide his game, covering it over
+deeply with snow to kill the scent of it from the prowling foxes. Then
+for days at a time they would forget the coming winter, and play as
+heedlessly as if the woods would always be as full of game as now; and
+again the mood would be upon them strongly, and they would kill all they
+could find and hide it in another place. But the instinct--if indeed it
+were instinct, and not the natural result of the mother's own
+experience--was weak at best; and the first time the cubs were hungry or
+lazy they would trail off to the hidden store. Long before the spring
+with its bitter need was upon them they had eaten everything, and had
+returned to the empty storehouse at least a dozen times, as a dog goes
+again and again to the place where he once hid a bone, and nosed it all
+over regretfully to be quite sure that they had overlooked nothing.
+
+More interesting to the wolves in these glad days than the game or the
+storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on
+the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,--splendid old stags with
+massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the
+sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far
+than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they
+crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets,
+sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, endless lines
+converging upon the vast open barrens where the caribou gathered to
+select their mates for another year. Where they all came from was a
+mystery that filled the cubs' heads with constant wonder. During the
+summer you see little of them,--here a cow with her fawn hiding deep in
+the cover, there a big stag standing out like a watchman on the mountain
+top; but when the early autumn comes they are everywhere, crossing
+rivers and lakes at regular points, and following deep paths which their
+ancestors have followed for countless generations.
+
+The cows and fawns seemed gentle and harmless enough, though their very
+numbers filled the young wolves with a certain awe. After their first
+lesson it would have been easy enough for the cubs to have killed all
+they wanted and to grow fat and lazy as the bears, which were now
+stuffing themselves before going off to sleep for the winter; but the
+old mother wolf held them firmly in check, for with plenty of small game
+everywhere, all wolves are minded to go quietly about their own business
+and let the caribou follow their own ways. When October came it brought
+the big stags into the open,--splendid, imposing beasts, with swollen
+necks and fierce red eyes and long white manes tossing in the wind. Then
+the wolves had to stand aside; for the stags roamed over all the land,
+pawing the moss in fury, bellowing their hoarse challenge, and charging
+like a whirlwind upon every living thing that crossed their paths.
+
+When the mother wolf, with her cubs at heel, saw one of these big furies
+at a distance she would circle prudently to avoid him. Again, as the
+cubs hunted rabbits, they would hear a crash of brush and a furious
+challenge as some quarrelsome stag winded them; and the mother with her
+cubs gathered close about her would watch alertly for his headlong rush.
+As he charged out the wolves would scatter and leap nimbly aside, then
+sit down on their tails in a solemn circle and watch as if studying the
+strange beast. Again and again he would rush upon them, only to find
+that he was fighting the wind. Mad as a hornet, he would single out a
+cub and follow him headlong through brush and brake till some subtle
+warning thrilled through his madness, telling him to heed his flank;
+then as he whirled he would find the savage old mother close at his
+heels, her white fangs bared and a dangerous flash in her eyes as she
+saw the hamstring so near, so easy to reach. One spring and a snap, and
+the ramping, masterful stag would have been helpless as a rabbit, his
+tendons cut cleanly at the hock; another snap and he must come down,
+spite of his great power, and be food for the growing cubs that sat on
+their tails watching him, unterrified now by his fierce challenge. But
+Megaleep's time had not yet come; besides, he was too tough. So the
+wolves studied him awhile, amused perhaps at the rough play; then, as if
+at a silent command, they vanished like shadows into the nearest cover,
+leaving the big stag in his rage to think himself master of all the
+world.
+
+Sometimes as the old he-wolf ranged alone, a silent, powerful,
+noble-looking brute, he would meet the caribou, and there would be a
+fascinating bit of animal play. He rarely turned aside, knowing his own
+power, and the cows and fawns after one look would bound aside and rack
+away at a marvelous pace over the barrens. In a moment or two, finding
+that they were not molested, they would turn and watch the wolf
+curiously till he disappeared, trying perhaps to puzzle it out why the
+ferocious enemy of the deep snows and the bitter cold should now be
+harmless as the passing birds.
+
+Again a young bull with his keen, polished spike-horns, more active and
+dangerous but less confident than the over-antlered stags, would stand
+in the old wolf's path, disputing with lowered front the right of way.
+Here the right of way meant a good deal, for in many places on the high
+plains the scrub spruces grow so thickly that a man can easily walk over
+the tops of them on his snow-shoes, and the only possible passage in
+summer-time is by means of the numerous paths worn through the scrub by
+the passing of animals for untold ages. So one or the other of the two
+splendid brutes that now approached each other in the narrow way must
+turn aside or be beaten down underfoot.
+
+Quietly, steadily, the old wolf would come on till almost within
+springing distance, when he would stop and lift his great head,
+wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning
+deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he
+would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle
+nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take
+his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along
+the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; while the young bull
+would stand wondering, his body hidden in the scrub and his head thrust
+into the narrow path to look after his strange adversary.
+
+Another time, as the old wolf ranged along the edges of the barrens
+where the caribou herds were gathering, he would hear the challenge of a
+huge stag and the warning crack of twigs and the thunder of hoofs as the
+brute charged. Still the wolf trotted quietly along, watching from the
+corners of his eyes till the stag was upon him, when he sprang lightly
+aside and let the rush go harmlessly by. Sitting on his tail he would
+watch the caribou closely--and who could tell what was passing behind
+those cunning eyes that glowed steadily like coals, unruffled as yet by
+the passing winds, but ready at a rough breath to break out in flames of
+fire? Again and again the stag would charge, growing more furious at
+every failure; and every time the wolf leaped aside he left a terrible
+gash in his enemy's neck or side, punishing him cruelly for his bullying
+attack, yet strangely refusing to kill, as he might have done, or to
+close on the hamstring with one swift snap that would have put the big
+brute out of the fight forever. At last, knowing perhaps from past
+experience the uselessness of punishing or of disputing with this madman
+that felt no wounds in his rage, the wolf would lope away to cover,
+followed by a victorious bugle-cry that rang over the wide barren and
+echoed back from the mountain side. Then the wolf would circle back
+stealthily and put his nose down into the stag's hoof-marks for a long,
+deep sniff, and go quietly on his way again. A wolf's nose never
+forgets. When he finds that trail wandering with a score of others over
+the snow, in the bitter days to come when the pack are starving,
+Wayeeses will know whom he is following.
+
+Besides the caribou there were other things to rouse the cubs' curiosity
+and give them something pleasant to do besides eating and sleeping. When
+the hunter's moon rose full and clear over the woods, filling all
+animals with strange unrest, the pack would circle the great harbor,
+trotting silently along, nose to tail in single file, keeping on the
+high ridge of mountains and looking like a distant train of husky dogs
+against the moonlight. When over the fishing village they would sit
+down, each one on the loftiest rock he could find, raise their muzzles
+to the stars, and join in the long howl, _Ooooooo-wow-ow-ow!_ a
+terrible, wailing cry that seemed to drive every dog within hearing
+stark crazy. Out of the village lanes far below they rushed headlong,
+and sitting on the beach in a wide circle, heads all in and tails out,
+they raised their noses to the distant, wolf-topped pinnacles and joined
+in the wailing answer. Then the wolves would sit very still, listening
+with cocked ears to the cry of their captive kinsmen, till the dismal
+howling died away into silence, when they would start the clamor into
+life again by giving the wolf's challenge.
+
+Why they did it, what they felt there in the strange unreality of the
+moonlight, and what hushed their profound enmity, none can tell.
+Ordinarily the wolf hates both fox and dog, and kills them whenever they
+cross his path; but to-night the foxes were yapping an answer all around
+them, and sometimes a few adventurous dogs would scale the mountains
+silently to sit on the rocks and join in the wild wolf chorus, and not a
+wolf stirred to molest them. All were more or less lunatic, and knew not
+what they were doing.
+
+For hours the uncanny comedy would drag itself on into the tense
+midnight silence, the wailing cry growing more demented and heartrending
+as the spell of ancient days fell again upon the degenerate huskies. Up
+on the lonely mountain tops the moon looked down, still and cold, and
+saw upon every pinnacle a dog or a wolf, each with his head turned up at
+the sky, howling his heart out. Down in the hamlet, scattered for miles
+along Deep Arm and the harbor shore, sleepers stirred uneasily at the
+clamor, the women clutching their babies close, the men cursing the
+crazy brutes and vowing all sorts of vengeance on the morrow. Then the
+wolves would slip away like shadows into the vast upland barrens, and
+the dogs, restless as witches with some unknown excitement, would run
+back to whine and scratch at the doors of their masters' cabins.
+
+Soon the big snowflakes were whirling in the air, busily weaving a soft
+white winding-sheet for the autumn which was passing away. And truly it
+had been a good time for the wolf cubs, as for most wild animals; and
+they had grown large and strong with their fat feeding, and wise with
+their many experiences. The ducks and geese vanished, driving southward
+ahead of the fierce autumn gales, and only the late broods of hardy
+eiders were left for a little season. Herring and caplin had long since
+drifted away into unknown depths, where the tides flowed endlessly over
+them and brought never a one ashore. Hares and ptarmigans turned white
+to hide on the snow, so that wolf and fox would pass close by without
+seeing them. Wood-mice pushed their winding tunnels and made their
+vaulted play rooms deep under the drifts, where none might molest nor
+make them afraid; and all game grew wary and wild, learning from
+experience, as it always does, that only the keen can survive the fall
+hunting. So the long winter, with its snow and ice and its bitter cold
+and its grim threat of famine, settled heavily over Harbor Weal and the
+Long Range where Wayeeses must find his living.
+
+
+
+_The White Wolf's Hunting_
+
+Threatening as the northern winter was, with its stern order to the
+birds to depart, and to the beasts to put on their thick furs, and to
+the little folk of the snow to hide themselves in white coats, and to
+all living things to watch well the ways that they took, it could bring
+no terror to Wayeeses and her powerful young cubs. The gladness of life
+was upon them, with none of its pains or anxieties or fears, as we know
+them; and they rolled and tumbled about in the first deep snow with the
+abandon of young foxes, filled with wonder at the strange blanket that
+covered the rough places of earth so softly and made their light
+footsteps more noiseless than before. For to be noiseless and
+inconspicuous, and so in harmony with his surroundings, is the first
+desire of every creature of the vast solitudes.
+
+Meeting the wolves now, as they roamed wild and free over the great
+range, one would hardly have recognized the little brown creatures that
+he saw playing about the den where the trail began. The cubs were
+already noble-looking brutes, larger than the largest husky dog; and the
+parents were taller, with longer legs and more massive heads and
+powerful jaws, than any great timber-wolf. A tremendous vitality
+thrilled in them from nose to paw tips. Their great bodies, as they lay
+quiet in the snow with heads raised and hind legs bent under them, were
+like powerful engines, tranquil under enormous pressure; and when they
+rose the movement was like the quick snap of a steel spring. Indeed,
+half the ordinary movements of Wayeeses are so quick that the eye cannot
+follow them. One instant a wolf would be lying flat on his side, his
+long legs outstretched on the moss, his eyes closed in the sleepy
+sunshine, his body limp as a hound's after a fox chase; the next
+instant, like the click and blink of a camera shutter, he would be
+standing alert on all four feet, questioning the passing breeze or
+looking intently into your eyes; and you could not imagine, much less
+follow, the recoil of twenty big electric muscles that at some subtle
+warning had snapped him automatically from one position to the other.
+They were all snow-white, with long thick hair and a heavy mane that
+added enormously to their imposing appearance; and they carried their
+bushy tails almost straight out as they trotted along, with a slight
+crook near the body,--the true wolf sign that still reappears in many
+collies to tell a degenerate race of a noble ancestry.
+
+After the first deep snows the family separated, led by their growing
+hunger and by the difficulty of finding enough game in one cover to
+supply all their needs. The mother and the smallest cub remained
+together; the two larger cubs ranged on the other side of the mountain,
+beating the bush and hunting into each other's mouth, as they had been
+trained to do; while the big he-wolf hunted successfully by himself, as
+he had done for years. Scattered as they were, they still kept track of
+each other faithfully, and in a casual way looked after one another's
+needs. Wherever he was, a wolf seemed to know by instinct where his
+fellows were hunting many miles away. When in doubt he had only to mount
+the highest hill and give the rallying cry, which carried an enormous
+distance in the still cold air, to bring the pack swiftly and silently
+about him.
+
+At times, when the cubs were hungry after a two-days fast, they would
+hear, faint and far away, the food cry, _yap-yap-yooo! yap-yap-yoooooo!_
+quivering under the stars in the tense early-morning air, and would dart
+away to find game freshly killed by one of the old wolves awaiting them.
+Again, at nightfall, a cub's hunting cry, _ooooo, ow-ow! ooooo, ow-ow!_
+a deep, almost musical hoot with two short barks at the end, would come
+singing down from the uplands; and the wolves, leaving instantly the
+game they were following, would hasten up to find the two cubs herding a
+caribou in a cleft of the rocks,--a young caribou that had lost his
+mother at the hands of the hunters, and that did not know how to take
+care of himself. And one of the cubs would hold him there, sitting on
+his tail in front of the caribou to prevent his escape, while the other
+cub called the wolves away from their own hunting to come and join the
+feast.
+
+Whether this were a conscious attempt to spare the game, or to alarm it
+as little as need be, it is impossible to say. Certainly the wolves
+know, better apparently than men, that persistent hunting destroys its
+own object, and that caribou especially, when much alarmed by dogs or
+wolves or men, will take the alarm quickly, and the scattered herds,
+moved by a common impulse of danger, will trail far away to other
+ranges. That is why the wolf, unlike the less intelligent dog, hunts
+always in a silent, stealthy, unobtrusive way; and why he stops hunting
+and goes away the instant his own hunger is satisfied or another wolf
+kills enough for all. And that is also the probable reason why he lets
+the deer alone as long as he can find any other game.
+
+This same intelligent provision was shown in another curious way. When a
+wolf in his wide ranging found a good hunting-ground where small game
+was plentiful, he would snap up a rabbit silently in the twilight and
+then go far away, perhaps to join the other cubs in a gambol, or to
+follow them to the cliffs over a fishing village and set all the dogs to
+howling. By day he would lie close in some thick cover, miles away from
+his hunting-ground. At twilight he would steal back and hunt quietly,
+just long enough to get his game, and then trot away again, leaving the
+cover as unharried as if there were not a wolf in the whole
+neighborhood.
+
+Such a good hunting-ground cannot long remain hidden from other prowlers
+in the wilderness; and Wayeeses, who was keeping his discovery to
+himself, would soon cross the trail of a certain old fox returning day
+after day to the same good covers. No two foxes, nor mice, nor men, nor
+any other two animals for that matter, ever leave the same scent,--any
+old hound, which will hold steadily to one fox though a dozen others
+cross or cover his trail, will show you that plainly in a day's
+hunting,--and the wolf would soon know surely that the same fox was
+poaching every night on his own preserves while he was away. To a
+casual, wandering hunter he paid no attention; but this cunning poacher
+must be laid by the heels, else there would not be a single rabbit left
+in the cover. So Wayeeses, instead of hunting himself at twilight when
+the rabbits are stirring, would wait till midday, when the sun is warm
+and foxes are sleepy, and then come back to find the poacher's trail and
+follow it to where Eleemos was resting for the day in a sunny opening in
+the scrub. There Wayeeses would steal upon him from behind and put an
+end to his poaching; or else, if the fox used the same nest daily, as is
+often the case when he is not disturbed, the wolf would circle the scrub
+warily to find the path by which Eleemos usually came out on his night's
+hunting. When he found that out Wayeeses would dart away in the long,
+rolling gallop that carries a wolf swiftly over the roughest country
+without fatigue. In an hour or two he would be back again with another
+wolf. Then Eleemos, dozing away in the winter sunshine, would hear an
+unusual racket in the scrub behind him,--some heavy animal brushing
+about heedlessly and sniffing loudly at a cold trail. No wolf certainly,
+for a wolf makes no noise. So Eleemos would get down from his warm rock
+and slip away, stopping to look back and listen jauntily to the clumsy
+brute behind him, till he ran plump into the jaws of the other wolf that
+was watching alert and silent beside the runway.
+
+When the snows were deep and soft the wolves took to hunting the
+lynxes,--big, savage, long-clawed fighters that swarm in the interior of
+Newfoundland and play havoc with the small game. For a single lynx the
+wolves hunted in pairs, trailing the big prowler stealthily and rushing
+upon him from behind with a fierce uproar to startle the wits out of his
+stupid head and send him off headlong, as cats go, before he knew what
+was after him. Away he would go in mighty jumps, sinking shoulder deep,
+often indeed up to his tufted ears, at every plunge. After him raced the
+wolves, running lightly and taking advantage of the holes he had made in
+the soft snow, till a swift snap in his flank brought Upweekis up with a
+ferocious snarl to tear in pieces his pursuers.
+
+Then began as savage a bit of fighting as the woods ever witness, teeth
+against talons, wolf cunning against cat ferocity. Crouched in the snow,
+spitting and snarling, his teeth bared and round eyes blazing and long
+claws aching to close in a death grip, Upweekis waited impatient as a
+fury for the rush. He is an ugly fighter; but he must always get close,
+gripping his enemy with teeth and fore claws while the hind claws get in
+their deadly work, kicking downward in powerful spasmodic blows and
+ripping everything before them. A dog would rush in now and be torn to
+pieces; but not so the wolves. Dancing lightly about the big lynx they
+would watch their chance to leap and snap, sometimes avoiding the blow
+of the swift paw with its terrible claws, and sometimes catching it on
+their heavy manes; but always a long red mark showed on the lynx's
+silver fur as the wolves' teeth clicked with the voice of a steel trap
+and they leaped aside without serious injury. As the big cat grew blind
+in his fury they would seize their chance like a flash and leap
+together; one pair of long jaws would close hard on the spine behind the
+tufted ears; another pair would grip a hind leg, while the wolves sprang
+apart and braced to hold. Then the fight was all over; and the moose
+birds, in pairs, came flitting in silently to see if there were not a
+few unconsidered trifles of the feast for them to dispose of.
+
+Occasionally, at nightfall, the wolves' hunting cry would ring out of
+the woods as one of the cubs discovered three or four of the lynxes
+growling horribly over some game they had pulled down together. 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. No young wolf would ever run into one of these bands
+alone; but when the pack rolled in upon them like a tempest the lynxes
+would leap squalling away in a blind rush; and the two big wolves,
+cutting in from the ends of the charging line, would turn a lynx kit
+deftly aside for the cubs to hold. Then another for themselves, and the
+hunt was over,--all but the feast at the end of it.
+
+When a big and cunning lynx took to a tree at the first alarm the wolves
+would go aside to leeward, where Upweekis could not see them, but where
+their noses told them perfectly all that he was doing. Then began the
+long game of patience, the wolves waiting for the game to come down, and
+the lynx waiting for the wolves to go away. Upweekis was at a
+disadvantage, for he could not see when he had won; and he generally
+came down in an hour or two, only to find the wolves hot on his trail
+before he had taken a dozen jumps. Whereupon he took to another tree and
+the game began again.
+
+[Illustration: "The silent, appalling death-watch began."]
+
+When the night was exceeding cold--and one who has not felt it can
+hardly imagine the bitter, killing intensity of a northern midnight in
+February--the wolves, instead of going away, would wait under the tree
+in which the lynx had taken refuge, and the silent, appalling
+death-watch began. A lynx, though heavily furred, cannot long remain
+exposed in the intense cold without moving. Moreover he must grip the
+branch on which he sits more or less firmly with his claws, to keep from
+falling; and the tense muscles, which flex the long claws to drive them
+into the wood, soon grow weary and numb in the bitter frost. The wolves
+meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot
+slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to
+keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on
+any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves' jaws; or else,
+knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest wolf and dies fighting.
+
+Spite of the killing cold, the problem of keeping warm was to the wolves
+always a simple one. Moving along through the winter night, always on a
+swift, silent trot, they picked up what game came in their way, and
+scarcely felt the eager cold that nipped at their ears, or the wind,
+keen as an icicle, that strove to penetrate the shaggy white coats that
+covered them. When their hunger was satisfied, or when the late day came
+and found them still hunting hopefully, they would push their way into
+the thick scrub from one of the numerous paths and lie down on a nest of
+leaves, which even in midwinter were dry as if no snow or rain had ever
+fallen. There, where no wind or gale however strong could penetrate, and
+with the snow filling the low branches overhead and piled over them in a
+soft, warm blanket three feet thick, they would push their sensitive
+noses into their own thick fur to keep them warm, and sleep comfortably
+till the early twilight came and called them out again to the hunting.
+
+At times, when not near the scrub, they would burrow deep into a great
+drift of snow and sleep in the warmest kind of a nest,--a trick that the
+husky dogs, which are but wolves of yesterday, still remember. Like all
+wild animals, they felt the coming of a storm long before the first
+white flakes began to whirl in the air; and when a great storm
+threatened they would lie down to sleep in a cave, or a cranny of the
+rocks, and let the drifts pile soft and warm over them. However long the
+storm, they never stirred abroad; partly for their own comfort, partly
+because all game lies hid at such times and it is practically
+impossible, even for a wolf, to find it. When a wolf has fed full he can
+go a week without eating and suffer no great discomfort. So Wayeeses
+would lie close and warm while the snow piled deep around him and the
+gale raged over the sea and mountains, but passed unfelt and unheeded
+over his head. Then, when the storm was over, he pawed his way up
+through the drift and came out in a new, bright world, where the game,
+with appetites sharpened by the long fast, was already stirring briskly
+in every covert.
+
+When March came, the bitterest month of all for the Wood Folk, even
+Wayeeses was often hard pressed to find a living. Small game grew scarce
+and very wild; the caribou had wandered far away to other ranges; and
+the cubs would dig for hours after a mouse, or stalk a snowbird, or wait
+with endless patience for a red squirrel to stop his chatter and come
+down to search under the snow for a fir cone that he had hidden there in
+the good autumn days. And once, when the hunger within was more nipping
+than the eager cold without, one of the cubs found a bear sleeping in
+his winter den among the rocks. With a sharp hunting cry, that sang like
+a bullet over the frozen wastes, he called the whole pack about him.
+While the rest lay in hiding the old he-wolf approached warily and
+scratched Mooween out of his den, and then ran away to entice the big
+brute into the open ground, where the pack rolled in upon him and killed
+him in a terrible fight before he had fairly shaken the sleep out of his
+eyes.
+
+Old Tomah, the trapper, was abroad now, taking advantage of the spring
+hunger. The wolves often crossed his snow-shoe trail, or followed it
+swiftly to see whither it led. For a wolf, like a farm dog, is never
+satisfied till he knows the ways of every living thing that crosses his
+range. Following the broad trail Wayeeses would find here a trapped
+animal, struggling desperately with the clog and the cruel gripping
+teeth, there the flayed carcass of a lynx or an otter, and yonder the
+leg of a dog or a piece of caribou meat hung by a cord over a runway,
+with the snow disturbed beneath it where the deadly trap was hidden. One
+glance, or a sniff at a distance, was enough for the wolf. Lynxes do not
+go about the range without their skins, and meat does not naturally hang
+on trees; so Wayeeses, knowing all the ways of the woods, would ignore
+these baits absolutely. Nevertheless he followed the snow-shoe trails
+until he knew where every unnatural thing lay hidden; and no matter how
+hungry he was, or how cunningly the old Indian hid his devices, or
+however deep the new snow covered all traces of man's work, Wayeeses
+passed by on the other side and kept his dainty feet out of every snare
+and pitfall.
+
+Once, when the two cubs that hunted together were hard pinched with
+hunger, they found Old Tomah in the twilight and followed him
+stealthily. The old Indian was swinging along, silent as a shadow of the
+woods, his gun on his shoulder and some skins on his back, heading
+swiftly for the little hut under the cliff, where he burrowed for the
+night as snug as a bear in his den. An old wolf would have known
+instantly the danger, for man alone bites at a distance; but the
+lop-eared cub, which was larger than his brother and therefore the
+leader, raised his head for the hunting cry. The first yap had hardly
+left his throat when the thunder roared, and something seared the wolf's
+side like a hot iron. The cubs vanished like the smoke from the old gun.
+Then the Indian came swiftly back on the trail, peering about with hawk
+eyes to see the effect of his shot.
+
+"By cosh! miss um dat time. Mus' be powder no good." Then, as he read
+the plain record in the snow, "One,--by cosh! two hwulf, lil fool hwulf,
+follow my footin'. Mus' be more, come soon pretty quick now; else he
+don' howl dat way. Guess mebbe ol' Injun better stay in house nights."
+And he trailed warily back to hide himself behind a rock and watch till
+dark in front of his little _commoosie_.
+
+Old Tomah's sleep was sound as usual that night; so he could not see the
+five shadows that stole out of the woods, nor hear the light footfalls
+that circled his camp, nor feel the breath, soft as an eddy of wind in a
+spruce top, that whiffed at the crack under his door and drifted away
+again. Next morning he saw the tracks and understood them; and as he
+trailed away through the still woods he was wondering, in his silent
+Indian way, why an old wolf should always bring Malsunsis, the cub, for
+a good look and a sniff at anything that he is to avoid ever after.
+
+When all else fails follow the caribou,--that is the law which governs
+the wolf in the hungry days; but before they crossed the mountains and
+followed the long valleys to the far southern ranges the wolves went
+back to the hills, where the trail began, for a more exciting and
+dangerous kind of hunting. The pack had held closer together of late;
+for the old wolves must often share even a scant fox or rabbit with the
+hungry and inexperienced youngsters. Now, when famine drove them to the
+very doors of the one enemy to be feared, only the wisest and wariest
+old wolf was fit to lead the foray.
+
+The little fishing village was buried under drifts and almost deserted.
+A few men lingered to watch the boats and houses; but the families had
+all gone inland to the winter tilts for wood and shelter. By night the
+wolves would come stealthily to prowl among the deserted lanes; and the
+fishermen, asleep in their clothes under caribou skins, or sitting close
+by the stove behind barred doors, would know nothing of the huge, gaunt
+forms that flitted noiselessly past the frosted windows. If a pig were
+left in his pen a sudden terrible squealing would break out on the still
+night; and when the fisherman rushed out the pen would be empty, with
+nothing whatever to account for piggie's disappearance. For to their
+untrained eyes even the tracks of the wolves were covered up by those of
+the numerous big huskies. If a cat prowled abroad, or an uneasy dog
+scratched to be let out, there would be a squall, a yelp,--and the cat
+would not come back, and the dog would never scratch at the door to be
+let in again.
+
+Only when nothing stirred in the village, when the dogs and cats had
+been spirited away, and when not even a rat stole from under the houses
+to gnaw at a fishbone, would the fishermen know of their big silent
+visitors. Then the wolves would gather on a snow-drift just outside the
+village and raise a howl, a frightful wail of famine and disappointment,
+that made the air shudder. From within the houses the dogs answered with
+mad clamor. A door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a
+fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and
+capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as
+a bowstring; a sudden yelp--_Hui-hui_, as the fisherman whistled to the
+dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat
+that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in
+vain, and shiver, and go back to the fire again.
+
+Almost every pleasant day a train of dogs would leave the village and go
+far back on the hills to haul fire-wood, or poles for the new
+fish-flakes. The wolves, watching from their old den, would follow at a
+distance to pick up a careless dog that ventured away from the fire to
+hunt rabbits when his harness was taken off. Occasionally a solitary
+wood-chopper would start with sudden alarm as a big white form glided
+into sight, and the alarm would be followed by genuine terror as he
+found himself surrounded by five huge wolves that sat on their tails
+watching him curiously. Gripping his ax he would hurry back to call his
+companions and harness the dogs and hurry back to the village before the
+early darkness should fall upon them. As the komatik went careering over
+the snow, the dogs yelping and straining at the harness, the men running
+alongside shouting _Hi-hi_ and cracking their whips, they could still
+see, over their shoulders, the wolves following lightly close behind;
+but when they rushed breathless into their houses, and grabbed their
+guns, and ran back on the trail, there was nothing to be seen. For the
+wolves, quick as light to feel the presence of danger, were already far
+away, trotting swiftly up the frozen arm of the harbor, following
+another sledge trail which came down that morning from the wilderness.
+
+That same night the wolves appeared silently in the little lodge, far up
+the Southeast Brook, where in a sheltered hollow of the hills the
+fishermen's families were sleeping away the bitter winter. Here for one
+long night they watched and waited in vain; for every living thing was
+safe in the tilts behind barred doors. In the morning little Noel's eyes
+kindled as he saw the wolves' tracks; and when they came back again the
+tilts were watching. As the lop-eared cub darted after a cat that shot
+like a ray of moonlight under a cabin, a window opened noiselessly, and
+_zing!_ a bowstring twanged its sharp warning in the tense silence. With
+a yelp the wolf tore the arrow from his shoulder. The warm blood
+followed the barb, and he lapped it eagerly in his hunger. Then, as the
+danger swept over him, he gave the trail cry and darted away. Doors
+banged open here and there; dogs barked to crack their throats; seal
+guns roared out and sent their heavy echoes crashing like thunder among
+the hills. Silence fell again over the lodge; and there were left only a
+few frightened dogs whose noses had already told them everything, a few
+fishermen who watched and listened, and one Indian boy with a long bow
+in his hand and an arrow ready on the string, who trailed away with a
+little girl at his side trying to puzzle out the track of one wolf that
+left a drop of blood here and there on the snow in the scant moonlight.
+
+Far up on the hillside in a little opening of the woods the scattered
+pack came together again. At the first uproar, so unbearable to a
+silence-loving animal, they had vanished in five different directions;
+yet so subtle, so perfect is the instinct which holds a wolf family
+together that the old mother had scarcely entered the glade alone and
+sat down to wait and listen when the other wolves joined her silently.
+Malsunsis, the big cub, scarcely felt his wound at first, for the arrow
+had but glanced through the thick skin and flesh, and he had torn it out
+without difficulty; but the old he-wolf limped painfully and held up one
+fore leg, pierced by a seal shot, as he loped away over the snow.
+
+It was their first rough experience with men, and probably the one
+feeling in every shaggy head was of puzzled wonder as to how and why it
+had all happened. Hitherto they had avoided men with a certain awe, or
+watched them curiously at a distance, trying to understand their
+superior ways; and never a hostile feeling for the masters of the woods
+had found place in a wolf's breast. Now man had spoken at last; his
+voice was a brutal command to be gone, and curiously enough these
+powerful big brutes, any one of which could have pulled down a man more
+easily than a caribou, never thought of questioning the order.
+
+It was certainly time to follow the caribou--that was probably the one
+definite purpose that came upon the wolves, sitting in a silent,
+questioning circle in the moonlight, with only the deep snows and the
+empty woods around them. For a week they had not touched food; for
+thrice that time they had not fed full, and a few days more would leave
+them unable to cope with the big caribou, which are always full fed and
+strong, thanks to nature's abundance of deer moss on the barrens. So
+they started as by a single impulse, and the mother wolf led them
+swiftly southward, hour after hour at a tireless pace, till the great
+he-wolf weakened and turned aside to nurse his wounded fore leg. The
+lop-eared cub drew out of the race at the same time. His own wound now
+required the soft massage of his tongue to allay the fever; and besides,
+the fear that was born in him, one night long ago, and that had slept
+ever since, was now awake again, and for the first time he was afraid to
+face the famine and the wilderness alone. So the pack swept on, as if
+their feet would never tire, and the two wounded wolves crept into the
+scrub and lay down together.
+
+A strange, terrible feeling stole swiftly over the covert, which had
+always hitherto been a place of rest and quiet content. The cub was
+licking his wound softly when he looked up in sudden alarm, and there
+was the great he-wolf looking at him hungrily, with a frightful flare in
+his green eyes. The cub moved away startled and tried to soothe his
+wound again; but the uncanny feeling was strong upon him still, and when
+he turned his head there was the big wolf, which had crept forward till
+he could see the cub behind a twisted spruce root, watching him steadily
+with the same horrible stare in his unblinking eyes. The hackles rose up
+on the cub's neck and a growl rumbled in his deep chest, for he knew now
+what it all meant. The smell of blood was in the air, and the old
+he-wolf, that had so often shared his kill to save the cubs, was now
+going crazy in his awful hunger. Another moment and there would have
+been a terrible duel in the scrub; but as the wolves sprang to their
+feet and faced each other some deep, unknown feeling stirred within them
+and they turned aside. The old wolf threw himself down heavily, facing
+away from the temptation, and the cub slipped aside to find another den,
+out of sight and smell of the huge leader, lest the scent of blood
+should overcome them again and cause them to fly at each other's throats
+in uncontrollable fury.
+
+Next morning a queer thing happened, but not uncommon under the
+circumstances among wolves and huskies. The cub was lying motionless,
+his head on his paws, his eyes wide open, when something stirred near
+him. A red squirrel came scampering through the scrub branches just
+under the thick coating of snow that filled all their tops. Slowly,
+carefully the young wolf gathered his feet under him, tense as a
+bowstring. As the squirrel whisked overhead the wolf leaped like a
+flash, caught him, and crushed him with a single grip. Then with the
+squirrel in his mouth he made his way back to where the big leader was
+lying, his head on his paws, his eyes turned aside. Slowly, warily the
+cub approached, with a friendly twist of his ears and head, till he laid
+the squirrel at the big wolf's very nose, then drew back a step and lay
+with paws extended and tail thumping the leaves, watching till the
+tidbit was seized ravenously and crushed and bolted in a single
+mouthful. Next instant both wolves sprang to their feet and made their
+way out of the scrub together.
+
+They took up the trail of the pack where they had left it, and followed
+it ten hours, the cub at a swift trot, the old wolf loping along on
+three legs. Then a rest, and forward again, slower and slower, night
+after day in ever-failing strength, till on the edge of a great barren
+they stopped as if struck, trembling all over as the reek of game poured
+into their starving nostrils.
+
+Too weak now to kill or to follow the fleet caribou, they lay down in
+the snow waiting, their ears cocked, their noses questioning every
+breeze for its good news. Left to themselves the trail must end here,
+for they could go no farther; but somewhere ahead in the vast silent
+barren the cubs were trailing, and somewhere beyond them the old mother
+wolf was laying her ambush.--Hark! from a spur of the valley, far below
+on their left, rang out the food cry, singing its way in the frosty air
+over woods and plains, and hurrying back over the trail to tell those
+who had fallen by the way that they were not forgotten. And when they
+leaped up, as at an electric shock, and raced for the cry, there were
+the cubs and the mother wolf, their hunger already satisfied, and there
+in the snow a young bull caribou to save them.
+
+So the long, hard winter passed away, and spring came again with its
+abundance. Grouse drummed a welcome in the woods; the _honk_ of wild
+geese filled the air with a joyous clangor, and in every open pool the
+ducks were quacking. No need now to cling like shadows to the herds of
+caribou, and no further need for the pack to hold together. The ties
+that held them melted like snows in the sunny hollows. First the old
+wolves, then the cubs, one by one drifted away whither the game or their
+new mates were calling them. When the summer came there was another den
+on the high hill overlooking the harbor, where the little brown cubs
+could look down with wonder at the shining sea and the slow
+fishing-boats and the children playing on the shore; but the wolves
+whose trail began there were far away over the mountains, following
+their own ways, waiting for the crisp hunting cry that should bring them
+again together.
+
+
+
+_Trails that Cross in the Snow_
+
+"Are we lost, little brother?" said Mooka, shivering.
+
+No need of the question, startling and terrible as it was from the lips
+of a child astray in the vast solitudes; for a great gale had swooped
+down from the Arctic, blotting out in clouds of whirling snow the world
+of plain and mountain and forest that, a moment before, had stretched
+wide and still before the little hunters' eyes.
+
+For an hour or more, running like startled deer, they had tried to
+follow their own snow-shoe trail back over the wide barrens into the
+friendly woods; but already the snow had filled it brim full, and
+whatever faint trace was left of the long raquettes was caught up by the
+gale and whirled away with a howl of exultation. Before them as they ran
+every trail of wolf and caribou and snow-shoe, and every distant
+landmark, had vanished; the world was but a chaos of mad rolling snow
+clouds; and behind them--Their stout little hearts trembled as they saw
+not a vestige of the trail they had just made. With the great world
+itself, their own little tracks, as fast as they made them, were swept
+and blotted out of existence. Like two sparrows that had dropped blinded
+and bewildered on the vast plain out of the snow cloud, they huddled
+together without one friendly sign to tell them whence they had come or
+whither they were going. Worst of all, the instinct of direction, which
+often guides an Indian through the still fog or the darkest night,
+seemed benumbed by the cold and the tumult; and not even Old Tomah
+himself could have told north or south in the blinding storm.
+
+Still they ran on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, heading the
+wind as best they could, till Mooka, tripping a second time in a little
+hollow where a brook ran deep under the snow, and knowing now that they
+were but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel's arm and repeated
+her question:
+
+"Are we lost, little brother?"
+
+And Noel, lost and bewildered, but gripping his bow in his fur mitten
+and peering here and there, like an old hunter, through the whirling
+flakes and rolling gusts to catch some landmark, some lofty crag or low
+tree-line that held steady in the mad dance of the world, still made
+confident Indian answer:
+
+"Noel not lost; Noel right here. Camp lost, little sister."
+
+"Can we find um, little brother?"
+
+"Oh, yes, we find um. Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now, after
+storm."
+
+"But storm last all night, and it's soon dark. Can we rest and not
+freeze? Mooka tired and--and frightened, little brother."
+
+"Sartin we rest; build um _commoosie_ and sleep jus' like bear in his
+den. Oh, yes, sartin we rest good," said Noel cheerfully.
+
+"And the wolves, little brother?" whispered Mooka, looking back timidly
+into the wild waste out of which they had come.
+
+"Never mind hwolves; nothing hunts in storm, little sister. Come on, we
+must find um woods now."
+
+For one brief moment the little hunter stood with upturned face, while
+Mooka bowed her head silently, and the great storm rolled unheeded over
+them. Still holding his long bow he stretched both hands to the sky in
+the mute appeal that _Keesuolukh_, the Great Mystery whom we call God,
+would understand better than all words. Then turning their backs to the
+gale they drifted swiftly away before it, like two wind-blown leaves,
+running to keep from freezing, and holding each other's hands tight lest
+they separate and be lost by the way.
+
+The second winter had come, sealing up the gloomy land till it rang like
+iron at the touch, then covering it deep with snow and polishing its
+mute white face with hoar-frost and hail driven onward by the fierce
+Arctic gales. An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a
+chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might
+travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early
+twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves,
+the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless,
+hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead.
+
+When the Moon of Famine came, the silence was rudely broken. Before
+daylight one morning, when the air was so tense and still that a whisper
+set it tinkling like silver bells, the rallying cry of the wolves rolled
+down from a mountain top; and the three cubs, that had waited long for
+the signal, left their separate trails far away and hurried to join the
+old leader.
+
+When the sun rose that morning one who stood on the high ridge of the
+Top Gallants, far to the eastward of Harbor Weal, would have seen seven
+trails winding down among the rocks and thickets. It needed only a
+glance to show that the seven trails, each one as clear-cut and delicate
+as that of a prowling fox, were the records of wolves' cautious feet;
+and that they were no longer beating the thickets for grouse and
+rabbits, but moving swiftly all together for the edges of the vast
+barrens where the caribou herds were feeding. Another glance--but here
+we must have the cunning eyes of Old Tomah the hunter--would have told
+that two of the trails were those of enormous wolves which led the pack;
+two others were plainly cubs that had not yet lost the cub trick of
+frolicking in the soft snow; while three others were just wolves, big
+and powerful brutes that moved as if on steel springs, and that still
+held to the old pack because the time had not yet come for them to
+scatter finally to their separate ways and head new packs of their own
+in the great solitudes.
+
+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. They followed stealthily the winding records of a score of
+caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren,
+stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou
+moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two
+Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps,
+scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that
+hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the
+woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So
+they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled
+exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and
+laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail,
+the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and
+swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.
+
+Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white
+surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion
+so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the
+edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had
+been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the
+snow and settle to rest again. But now, where the plain seemed most
+empty and lifeless, seven great white wolves crouched down in the snow
+in a little hollow, their paws extended, their hind legs bent like
+powerful springs beneath them, their heads raised cautiously so that
+only their ears and eyes showed above the rim of the little hollow where
+they hid. So they lay, tense, alert, ready, watching with eager,
+inquisitive eyes the two children drawing steadily nearer, the only sign
+of life in the whole wide, desolate landscape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Follow the back trail of the snow-shoes now, while the wolves are
+waiting, and it leads you over the great barren into the gloomy spruce
+woods; beyond that it crosses two more barrens and stretches of
+intervening forest; then up a great hill and down into a valley, where
+the lodge lay hidden, buried deep under Newfoundland snows.
+
+Here the fishermen lived, sleeping away the bitter winter. In the late
+autumn they had left the fishing village at Harbor Weal, driven out like
+the wild ducks by the fierce gales that raged over the whole coast. With
+their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail
+up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and led into
+a great silent wood, sheltered on every side by the encircling hills.
+Here the tilts were built with double walls, filled in between with
+leaves and moss, to help the little stoves that struggled bravely with
+the terrible cold; and the roofs were covered over with poles and bark,
+or with the brown sails that had once driven the fishing-boats out and
+in on the wings of the gale. The high mountains on the west stood
+between them and the icy winds that swept down over the sea from the
+Labrador and the Arctic wastes; wood in abundance was at their doors,
+and the trout-stream that sang all day long under its bridges of snow
+and ice was always ready to brim their kettles out of its abundance.
+
+So the new life began pleasantly enough; but as the winter wore away and
+provisions grew scarce and game vanished from the coverts, they all felt
+the fearful pinch of famine. Every morning now a confused circle of
+tracks in the snow showed where the wild prowlers of the woods had come
+and sniffed at the very doors of the tilts in their ravening hunger.
+
+Noel's father and Old Tomah were far away, trapping, in the interior;
+and to Noel with his snares and his bow and arrows fell the pleasant
+task of supplying the family's need when the stock of dried fish melted
+away. On this March morning he had started with Mooka at daylight to
+cross the mountains to some great barrens where he had found tracks and
+knew that a few herds of caribou were still feeding. The sun was dimmed
+as it rose, and the sun-dogs gave mute warning of the coming storm; but
+the cupboard was empty at home, and even a little hunter thinks first of
+the game he is following and lets the storm take care of itself. So they
+hurried on unheeding,--Noel with his bow and arrows, Mooka with a little
+bag containing a loaf and a few dried caplin,--peering under every brush
+pile for the shining eyes of a rabbit, and picking up one big grouse and
+a few ptarmigan among the bowlders of a great bare hillside. On the
+edges of the great barren under the Top Gallants they found the fresh
+tracks of feeding caribou, and were following eagerly when they ran
+plump into the wolf trail.
+
+Now by every law of the chase the game belonged to these earlier
+hunters; and by every power in their gaunt, famished bodies the wolves
+meant to have it. So said the trail. Every stealthy advance in single
+file across, the open, every swift rush over the hollows that might hide
+them from eyes watching back from the distant woods, showed the wolves'
+purpose clear as daylight; and had Noel been wiser he would have read a
+warning from the snow and turned aside. But he only drew his longest,
+keenest arrow and pressed on more eagerly than before.
+
+The two trails had crossed each other at last. Beginning near together,
+one on the mountains, the other by the sea, they had followed their
+separate devious ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now
+drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the
+makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly,
+inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them
+apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by
+the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that
+subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild
+rangers of the plains, and that still leads a wolf to follow and watch
+the doings of men with intense curiosity. Now the trails had met fairly
+in the snow, and a few steps more would bring the boy and the wolf face
+to face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Noel was stealing along warily, his arrow ready on the string. Mooka
+beside him was watching a faint cloud of mist, the breath of caribou,
+that blurred at times the dark tree-line in the distance, when one of
+those mysterious warnings that befall the hunter in the far North rested
+upon them suddenly like a heavy hand.
+
+I know not what it is,--what lesser pressure of air, to which we respond
+like a barometer; or what unknown chords there are within us that sleep
+for years in the midst of society and that waken and answer, like an
+animal's, to the subtle influence of nature,--but one can never be
+watched by an unseen wild animal without feeling it vaguely; and one can
+never be so keen on the trail that the storm, before it breaks, will not
+whisper a warning to turn back to shelter before it is too late. To Noel
+and Mooka, alone on the barrens, the sun was no dimmer than before; the
+heavy gray bank of clouds still held sullenly to its place on the
+horizon; and no eyes, however keen, would have noticed the tiny dark
+spots that centered and glowed upon them over the rim of the little
+hollow where the wolves were watching. Nevertheless, a sudden chill fell
+upon them both. They stopped abruptly, shivering a bit, drawing closer
+together and scanning the waste keenly to know what it all meant.
+
+"_Mitcheegeesookh_, the storm!" said Noel sharply; and without another
+word they turned and hurried back on their own trail. In a short half
+hour the world would be swallowed up in chaos. To be caught out on the
+barrens meant to be lost; and to be lost here without fire and shelter
+meant death, swift and sure. So they ran on, hoping to strike the woods
+before the blizzard burst upon them.
+
+They were scarcely half-way to shelter when the white flakes began to
+whirl around them. With startling, terrible swiftness the familiar world
+vanished; the guiding trail was blotted out, and nothing but a wolf's
+instinct could have held a straight course in the blinding fury of the
+storm. Still they held on bravely, trying in vain to keep their
+direction by the eddying winds, till Mooka stumbled twice at the same
+hollow over a hidden brook, and they knew they were running blindly in a
+circle of death. Frightened at the discovery they turned, as the caribou
+do, keeping their backs steadily to the winds, and drifted slowly away
+down the long barren.
+
+Hour after hour they struggled on, hand in hand, without a thought of
+where they were going. Twice Mooka fell and lay still, but was dragged
+to her feet and hurried onward again. The little hunter's own strength
+was almost gone, when a low moan rose steadily above the howl and hiss
+of the gale. It was the spruce woods, bending their tops to the blast
+and groaning at the strain. With a wild whoop Noel plunged forward, and
+the next instant they were safe within the woods. All around them the
+flakes sifted steadily, silently down into the thick covert, while the
+storm passed with a great roar over their heads.
+
+In the lee of a low-branched spruce they stopped again, as though by a
+common impulse, while Noel lifted his hands. "Thanks, thanks,
+_Keesuolukh_; we can take care of ourselves now," the brave little heart
+was singing under the upstretched arms. Then they tumbled into the snow
+and lay for a moment utterly relaxed, like two tired animals, in that
+brief, delicious rest which follows a terrible struggle with the storm
+and cold.
+
+First they ate a little of their bread and fish to keep up their
+spirits; then--for the storm that was upon them might last for
+days--they set about preparing a shelter. With a little search, whooping
+to each other lest they stray away, they found a big dry stub that some
+gale had snapped off a few feet above the snow. While Mooka scurried
+about, collecting birch bark and armfuls of dry branches, Noel took off
+his snow-shoes and began with one of them to shovel away the snow in a
+semicircle around the base of the stub. In a short half-hour he had a
+deep hole there, with the snow banked up around it to the height of his
+head. Next with his knife he cut a lot of light poles and scrub spruces
+and, sticking the butts in his snowbank, laid the tops, like the sticks
+of a wigwam, firmly against the big stub. A few armfuls of spruce boughs
+shingled over this roof, and a few minutes' work shoveling snow thickly
+upon them to hold them in place and to make a warm covering; then a
+doorway, or rather a narrow tunnel, just beyond the stub on the straight
+side of the semicircle, and their _commoosie_ was all ready. Let the
+storm roar and the snow sift down! The thicker it fell the warmer would
+be their shelter. They laughed and shouted now as they scurried out and
+in, bringing boughs for a bed and the fire-wood which Mooka had
+gathered.
+
+Against the base of the dry stub they built their fire,--a wee, sociable
+little fire such as an Indian always builds, which is far better than a
+big one, for it draws you near and welcomes you cheerily, instead of
+driving you away by its smoke and great heat. Soon the big stub itself
+began to burn, glowing steadily with a heat that filled the snug little
+_commoosie_, while the smoke found its way out of the hole in the roof
+which Noel had left for that purpose. Later the stub burned through to
+its hollow center, and then they had a famous chimney, which soon grew
+hot and glowing inside, and added its mite to the children's comfort.
+
+Noel and Mooka were drowsy now; but before the long night closed in upon
+them they had gathered more wood, and laid aside some wisps of birch
+bark to use when they should wake, cold and shivering, and find their
+little fire gone out and the big stub losing its cheery glow. Then they
+lay down to rest, and the night and the storm rolled on unheeded.
+
+Towards morning they fell into a heavy sleep; for the big stub began to
+burn more freely as the wind changed, and they need not stir every half
+hour to feed their little fire and keep from freezing. It was broad
+daylight, the storm had ceased, and a woodpecker was hammering loudly on
+a hollow shell over their heads when they started up, wondering vaguely
+where they were. Then while Noel broke out of the _commoosie_, which was
+fairly buried under the snow, to find out where he was, Mooka rebuilt
+the fire and plucked a ptarmigan and set it to toasting with the last of
+their bread over the coals.
+
+Noel came back soon with a cheery whoop to tell the little cook that
+they had drifted before the storm down the whole length of the great
+barren, and were camped now on the opposite side, just under the highest
+ridge of the Top Gallants. There was not a track on the barrens, he
+said; not a sign of wolf or caribou, which had probably wandered deeper
+into the woods for shelter. So they ate their bread to the last crumb
+and their bird to the last bone, and, giving up all thought of hunting,
+started up the big barren, heading for the distant Lodge, where they had
+long since been given up for lost.
+
+They had crossed the barren and a mile of thick woods beyond when they
+ran into the fresh trail of a dozen caribou. Following it swiftly they
+came to the edge of a much smaller barren that they had crossed
+yesterday, and saw at a glance that the trail stretched straight across
+it. Not a caribou was in sight; but they might nevertheless be feeding,
+or resting in the woods just beyond; and for the little hunters to show
+themselves now in the open would mean that they would become instantly
+the target for every keen eye that was watching the back trail. So they
+started warily to circle the barren, keeping just within the fringe of
+woods out of sight.
+
+They had gone scarcely a hundred steps when Noel whipped out a long
+arrow and pointed silently across the open. From the woods on the other
+side the caribou had broken out of a dozen tunnels under the spruces,
+and came trotting back in their old trails, straight downwind to where
+the little hunters were hiding.
+
+The deer were acting queerly,--now plunging away with the high, awkward
+jumps that caribou use when startled; now swinging off on their swift,
+tireless rack, and before they had settled to their stride halting
+suddenly to look back and wag their ears at the trail. For Megaleep is
+full of curiosity as a wild turkey, and always stops to get a little
+entertainment out of every new thing that does not threaten him with
+instant death. Then out of the woods behind them trotted five white
+wolves,--not hunting, certainly! for whenever the caribou stopped to
+look the wolves sat down on their tails and yawned. One lay down and
+rolled over and over in the soft snow; another chased and capered after
+his own brush, whirling round and round like a little whirlwind, and the
+shrill _ki-yi_ of a cub wolf playing came faintly across the barren.
+
+It was a strange scene, yet one often witnessed on the lonely plains of
+the far North: the caribou halting, running away, and halting again to
+look back and watch the queer antics of their big enemies, which seemed
+now so playful and harmless; the cunning wolves playing on the game's
+curiosity at every turn, knowing well that if once frightened the deer
+would break away at a pace which would make pursuit hopeless. So they
+followed rather than drove the foolish deer across the barren, holding
+them with monkey tricks and kitten's capers, and restraining with an
+iron grip their own fearful hunger and the blind impulse to rush in
+headlong and have it all quickly over.
+
+Kneeling behind a big spruce, Noel was trying nervously the spring and
+temper of his long bow, divided in desire between the caribou, which
+they needed sadly at home, and one of the great wolves whose death would
+give him a place among the mighty hunters, when Mooka clutched his arm,
+her eyes snapping with excitement, her finger pointing silently back on
+their own trail. A vague shadow glided swiftly among the trees. An
+enormous white wolf appeared, vanished, came near them again, and
+crouched down under a low spruce branch waiting.
+
+Again the two trails had crossed in the snow. The big wolf as he
+appeared had thrust his nose into the snow-shoe tracks, and a sniff or
+two told him everything,--who had passed, and how long ago, and what
+they were doing, and how far ahead they were now waiting. But the
+caribou were coming, coaxed along marvelously by the cubs and the old
+mother; and the great silent wolf, that had left the pack playing with
+the game while he circled the barren at top speed, now turned to the
+business in hand with no thought nor fear of harm from the two children
+whom he had watched but yesterday.
+
+Not so Noel. The fire blazed out in his eyes; the long bow swung to the
+wolf, bending like a steel spring, and the feathered shaft of an arrow
+lay close against the boy's cheek. But Mooka caught his arm--
+
+"Look, Noel, his ear! _Malsunsis_, my little wolf cub," she breathed
+excitedly. And Noel, with a great wonder in his eyes, slacked his bow,
+while his thoughts jumped far away to the den on the mountains where the
+trail began, and to three little cubs playing like kittens with the
+grasshoppers and the cloud shadows; for the great wolf that lay so still
+near them, his eyes fixed in a steady glow upon the coming caribou, had
+one ear bent sharply forward, like a leaf that has been creased between
+the fingers.
+
+Again Mooka broke the tense silence in a low whisper. "How many wolf
+trails you see yesterday, little brother?"
+
+"Seven," said Noel, whose eyes already had the cunning of Old Tomah's to
+understand everything.
+
+"Then where tother wolf? Only six here," breathed Mooka, looking timidly
+all around, fearing to find the steady glare of green eyes fixed upon
+them from the shadow of every thicket.
+
+Noel stirred uneasily. Somewhere close at hand another huge wolf was
+waiting; and a wholesome fear fell upon him, with a shiver at the
+thought of how near he had come in his excitement to bringing the whole
+savage pack snarling about his ears.
+
+A snort of alarm cut short his thinking. There at the edge of the wood,
+not twenty feet away, stood a caribou, pointing his ears at the children
+whom he had almost stumbled over as he ran, thinking only of the wolves
+behind. The long bow sprang back of itself; an arrow buzzed like a wasp
+and buried itself deep in the white chest. Like a flash a second arrow
+followed as the stag turned away, and with a jump or two he sank to his
+knees, as if to rest awhile in the snow.
+
+But Mooka scarcely saw these things. Her eyes were fastened on the great
+white wolf which she had claimed for her own when he was a toddling cub.
+He lay still as a stone under the tip of a bending spruce branch, his
+eyes following every motion of a young bull caribou which three of the
+wolves had singled out of the herd and were now guiding surely straight
+to his hiding-place.
+
+The snort and plunge of the smitten animal startled this young stag and
+he turned aside from his course. Like a shadow the big wolf that Mooka
+was watching changed his place so as to head the game, while two of the
+pack on the open barrens slipped around the caribou and turned him back
+again to the woods. At the edge of the cover the stag stopped for a last
+look, pointing his ears first at Noel's caribou, which now lay very
+still in the snow, then at the wolves, which with quick instinct had
+singled him out of the herd, knowing in some subtle way he was watched
+from beyond, and which gathered about him in a circle, sitting on their
+tails and yawning. Slowly, silently Mooka's wolf crept forward, pushing
+his great body through the snow. A terrific rush, a quick snap under the
+stag's chest just behind the fore legs, where the heart lay; then the
+big wolf leaped aside and sat down quietly again to watch.
+
+It was soon finished. The stag plunged away, settled into his long rack,
+slowed down to a swaying, weakening trot. After him at a distance glided
+the big wolf, lapping eagerly at the crimson trail, but holding himself
+with tremendous will power from rushing in headlong and driving the
+game, which might run for miles if too hard pressed. The stag sank to
+his knees; a sharp yelp rang like a pistol-shot through the still woods;
+then the pack rolled in like a whirlwind, and it was all over.
+
+Creeping near on the trail the little hunters crouched under a low
+spruce, watching as if fascinated the wild feast of the wolves. Noel's
+bow was ready in his hand; but luckily the sight of these huge, powerful
+brutes overwhelmed him and drove all thoughts of killing out of his
+head. Mooka plucked him by the sleeve at last, and pointed silently
+homewards. It was surely time to go, for the biggest wolf had already
+stretched himself and was licking his paws, while the two cubs with full
+stomachs were rolling over and over and biting each other playfully in
+the snow. Silently they stole away, stopping only to tie a rag to a
+pointed stick, which they thrust between their own caribou's ribs to
+make the wolves suspicious and keep them from tearing the game and
+eating the tidbits while the little hunters hurried away to bring the
+men with their guns and dog sledges.
+
+They had almost crossed the second barren when Mooka, looking back
+uneasily from the edge of the woods, saw a single big wolf emerge across
+the barren and follow swiftly on their trail. Startled at the sight,
+they turned swiftly to run; for that terrible feeling which sweeps over
+a hunter, when for the first time he finds himself hunted in his turn,
+had clutched their little hearts and crushed all their confidence. A
+sudden panic seized them; they rushed away for the woods, running side
+by side till they broke into the fringe of evergreen that surrounded the
+barren. There they dropped breathless under a low fir and turned to
+look.
+
+"It was wrong to run, little brother," whispered Mooka.
+
+"Why?" said Noel.
+
+"Cause Wayeeses see it, and think we 'fraid."
+
+"But I was 'fraid out there, little sister," confessed Noel bravely.
+"Here we can climb tree; good chance shoot um with my arrows."
+
+Like two frightened rabbits they crouched under the fir, staring back
+with wild round eyes over the trail, fearing every instant to see the
+savage pack break out of the woods and come howling after them. But only
+the single big wolf appeared, trotting quietly along in their footsteps.
+Within bowshot he stopped with head raised, looking, listening intently.
+Then, as if he had seen them in their hiding, he turned aside, circled
+widely to the left, and entered the woods far below.
+
+Again the two little hunters hurried on through the silent, snow-filled
+woods, a strange disquietude settling upon them as they felt they were
+followed by unseen feet. Soon the feeling grew too strong to resist.
+Noel with his bow ready, and a strange chill trickling like cold water
+along his spine, was hiding behind a tree watching the back trail, when
+a low exclamation from Mooka made him turn. There behind them, not ten
+steps away, a huge white wolf was sitting quietly on his tail, watching
+them with absorbed, silent intentness.
+
+Fear and wonder, and swift memories of Old Tomah and the wolf that had
+followed him when he was lost, swept over Noel in a flood. He rose
+swiftly, the long bow bent, and again a deadly arrow cuddled softly
+against his cheek; but there were doubts and fears in his eye till Mooka
+caught his arm with a glad little laugh--
+
+"My cub, little brother. See his ear, and oh, his tail! Watch um tail,
+little brother." For at the first move the big wolf sprang alertly to
+his feet, looked deep into Mooka's eyes with that intense, penetrating
+light which serves a wild animal to read your very thoughts, and
+instantly his great bushy tail was waving its friendly greeting.
+
+It was indeed Malsunsis, the cub. Before the great storm broke he had
+crouched with the pack in the hollow just in front of the little
+hunters; and although the wolves were hungry, it was with feelings of
+curiosity only that they watched the children, who seemed to the
+powerful brutes hardly more to be feared than a couple of snowbirds
+hopping across the vast barren. But they were children of men--that was
+enough for the white-wolf packs, which for untold years had never been
+known to molest a man. This morning Malsunsis had again crossed their
+trail. He had seen them lying in wait for the caribou that his own pack
+were driving; had seen Noel smite the bull, and was filled with wonder;
+but his own business kept him still in hiding. Now, well fed and
+good-natured, but more curious than ever, he had followed the trail of
+these little folk to learn something about them.
+
+Mooka as she watched him was brim full of an eagerness which swept away
+all fear. "Tomah says, wolf and Injun hunt just alike; keep ver' still;
+don't trouble game 'cept when he hungry," she whispered. "Says too,
+_Keesuolukh_ made us friends 'fore white man come, spoil um everything.
+Das what Malsunsis say now wid hees tail and eyes; only way he can talk
+um, little brother. No, no,"--for Noel's bow was still strongly
+bent,--"you must not shoot. Malsunsis think we friends." And trusting
+her own brave little heart she stepped in front of the deadly arrow and
+walked straight to the big wolf, which moved aside timidly and sat down
+again at a distance, with the friendly expression of a lost collie in
+eyes and ears and wagging tail tip.
+
+Cheerfully enough Noel slacked his long bow, for the wonder of the woods
+was strong upon him, and the hunting-spirit, which leads one forth to
+frighten and kill and to break the blessed peace, had vanished in the
+better sense of comradeship which steals over one when he watches the
+Wood Folk alone and friendly in the midst of the solitudes. As they went
+on their way again the big wolf trotted after them, keeping close to
+their trail but never crossing it, and occasionally ranging up
+alongside, as if to keep them in the right way. Where the woods were
+thickest Noel, with no trail to guide him, swung uncertainly to left and
+right, peering through the trees for some landmark on the distant hills.
+Twice the big wolf trotted out to one side, returned and trotted out
+again in the same direction; and Noel, taking the subtle hint, as an
+Indian always does, bore steadily to the right till the great ridge,
+beyond which the Lodge was hidden, loomed over the tree-tops. And to
+this day he believes--and it is impossible, for I have tried, to
+dissuade him--that the wolf knew where they were going and tried in his
+own way to show them.
+
+So they climbed the long ridge to the summit, and from the deep valley
+beyond the smoke of the Lodge rose up to guide them. There the wolf
+stopped; and though Noel whistled and Mooka called cheerily, as they
+would to one of their own huskies that they had learned to love,
+Malsunsis would go no farther. He sat there on the ridge, his tail
+sweeping a circle in the snow behind him, his ears cocked to the
+friendly call and his eyes following every step of the little hunters,
+till they vanished in the woods below. Then he turned to follow his own
+way in the wilderness.
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
+
+Cheokhes, _che-ok-h[)e]s'_, the mink.
+
+Cheplahgan, _chep-lah'gan_, the bald eagle.
+
+Ch'geegee-lokh-sis, _ch`gee-gee'lock-sis_, the chickadee.
+
+Chigwooltz, _chig-wooltz'_, the bullfrog.
+
+Clote Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians.
+Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc.
+
+Commoosie, _com-moo-sie'_, a little shelter, or hut, of boughs and bark.
+
+Deedeeaskh, _dee-dee'ask_, the blue jay.
+
+Eleemos, _el-ee'mos_, the fox.
+
+Hawahak, _ha-wa-h[)a]k'_, the hawk.
+
+Hetokh, _h[)e]t'[=o]kh_, the deer.
+
+Hukweem, _huk-weem'_, the great northern diver, or loon.
+
+Ismaques, _iss-ma-ques'_, the fish-hawk.
+
+Kagax, _k[)a]g'[)a]x_, the weasel.
+
+Kakagos, _ka-ka-g[)o]s'_, the raven.
+
+K'dunk, _k'dunk'_, the toad.
+
+Keeokuskh, _kee-o-kusk'_, the muskrat.
+
+Keeonekh, _kee'o-nek_, the otter.
+
+Keesuolukh, _kee-su-[=o]'luk_, the Great Mystery, i.e. God.
+
+Killooleet, _kil'loo-leet_, the white-throated sparrow.
+
+Kookooskoos, _koo-koo-skoos'_, the great horned owl.
+
+Kopseep, _kop'seep_, the salmon.
+
+Koskomenos, _k[)o]s'k[)o]m-e-n[)o]s'_, the kingfisher.
+
+Kupkawis, _cup-ka'wis_, the barred owl.
+
+Kwaseekho, _kwa-seek'ho_, the sheldrake.
+
+Lhoks, _locks_, the panther.
+
+Malsun, _m[)a]l'sun_, the wolf.
+
+Malsunsis, _m[)a]l-sun'sis_, the little wolf cub.
+
+Matwock, _m[)a]t'wok_, the white bear.
+
+Meeko, _meek'[=o]_, the red squirrel.
+
+Megaleep, _meg'a-leep_, the caribou.
+
+Milicete, _mil'[)i]-cete_, the name of an Indian tribe; written also
+Malicete.
+
+Mitchegeesookh, _mitch-e-gee'sook_, the snowstorm.
+
+Mitches, _mit'ch[)e]s_, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse.
+
+Moktaques, _mok-ta'ques_, the hare.
+
+Mooween, _moo-ween'_, the black bear.
+
+Mooweesuk, _moo-wee'suk_, the coon.
+
+Musquash, _mus'quash_, the muskrat.
+
+Nemox, _n[)e]m'ox_, the fisher.
+
+Pekompf, _pe-kompf'_, the wildcat.
+
+Pekquam, _pek-w[)a]m'_, the fisher.
+
+Queokh, _qu[=e]'ok_, the sea-gull.
+
+Quoskh, _quoskh_, the blue heron.
+
+Seksagadagee, _sek'sa-gae-da'gee_, the Canada grouse, or spruce
+partridge.
+
+Skooktum, _skook'tum_, the trout.
+
+Tookhees, _tok'hees_, the wood-mouse.
+
+Umquenawis, _um-que-na'wis_, the moose.
+
+Unk Wunk, _unk'wunk_, the porcupine.
+
+Upweekis, _up-week'iss_, the Canada lynx.
+
+Waptonk, _w[)a]p-tonk'_, the wild goose.
+
+Wayeesis, _way-ee'sis_, the white wolf, the strong one.
+
+Whitooweek, _whit-oo-week'_, the woodcock.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Northern Trails, Book I., by William J. Long
+
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