upon himself the wrath of the man-folk. A din of dogs aroused him,
and, mounting a rock, he saw a motley crowd of curs upon his trail,
with half a dozen men following far behind them. He bared his fangs
disdainfully, then turned and sought the forest at a long gallop,
which, for all his limp and his twinge, soon carried him beyond
ear-shot of his pursuers.
For hours he pressed on ever eastward, with a little trend to the
south, crossing many a trail of deer, caribou, and moose, passing here
and there a beaver village, and realizing that he had come to
wonderful hunting-grounds. But when he came to the outskirts of
another settlement, he halted. His jaws ran water at the thought of
finding another sheep pasture, and he decided to range for awhile in
this neighbourhood. He was quick to realize the disadvantage of man's
proximity, but he would dare it for a little before retiring into the
untainted wilderness. He had learned his lesson quickly, however. That
night he refrained from stirring up the dogs of the settlement; and he
killed but one sheep, in a secluded corner of the pasture.
Now, by singular chance, it happened that at this particular
settlement there was already a sheep-killer harrying the thick-wooled
flocks. A wandering peddler, smitten with a fever while visiting the
settlement, had died, and left to pay for his board and burial only
his pack and his dog. The dog, so fiercely devoted to him as to have
made the funeral difficult, was a long-legged, long-haired, long-jawed
bitch, apparently a cross between a collie and a Scotch deerhound. So
unusual a beast, making all the other dogs of the settlement look
contemptible, was in demand; but she was deaf, for a time, to all
overtures. For a week she pined for the dead peddler; and then, with
an air of scornful tolerance, consented to take up her abode with the
village shopkeeper. Her choice was made not for any distinction in the
man, but for a certain association, apparently, with the smell of the
contents of her late master's pack. For months she sulked and was
admired, making friends with neither man, woman, nor child, and
keeping all the village curs at a respectful distance.
A few days, however, before the arrival of the journeying wolf, a new
interest had entered into the life of the long-jawed bitch. Her eyes
resumed their old bright alertness, and she grew perceptibly less
ungracious to the loafers gathered around the stove in the back store.
She had entered upon a career which would have ended right speedily
with a bullet in her reckless brain, but for an utterly unlooked-for
freak of fate. She had discovered that, if every night she could hunt,
run down, and kill one sheep, life might again become worth living,
and the coarse-clodded grave in the little lonely cemetery might be
forgotten. It was not the killing, but the chase, that she craved. The
killing was, of course, merely the ecstatic culmination. So she went
about the sport with artistic cunning. To disguise her trail she came
upon the flocks from the side of the forest, as any wild beast would.
Then she would segregate her victim with a skill born of her collie
ancestry, set it running, madden it to the topmost delirium of fear
and flight, and almost let it escape before darting at its throat and
ending the game with the gush of warm blood between her jaws.
Such had been her adventures for three nights: and already the
settlement was concerned, and already glances of half-formed suspicion
had been cast upon the long-legged bitch so innocently asleep by the
stove, when the wandering wolf arrived upon the outskirts of the
settlement. The newcomer was quick to note and examine the tracks of a
peculiarly large dog--a foeman, perhaps, to prove not unworthy of his
fangs. And he conducted his reconnoitring with more care. Then he came
upon the carcass of a sheep, torn and partly eaten. It was almost like
a wolf's work--though less cleanly done--and the smell of the cold
trail was unmistakably dog. The black-backed wolf was puzzled. He had
a vague notion that dogs were the protectors, not the hunters, of all
the four-legged kindred belonging to men. The problem seemed to him an
important one. He crouched in ambush near the carcass to consider it
for a time, before setting out upon his own sheep-hunting.
As he crouched, watching, he saw the killer approach. He saw a tall,
lean bitch come up, tear carelessly at the dead sheep for a moment or
two, in a manner of ownership, and turn to leave. She was as long in
leg and flank as himself, and possessed of the like punishing jaws;
but she was not so massive in the shoulder. The wolf felt that he
could master her in combat; but he felt no disposition for the fight.
The dog-smell that came to his nostrils did not excite the usual hot
aversion. On the contrary, it made him desire to know more of the
sheep-killing stranger.
But acquaintance is not made lightly among the wild kindred, who are
quick to resent a presumption. The wolf slipped noiselessly back into
his covert, emerged upon the farther side of the thicket, and at a
distance of some twenty paces stood forth in the glimmering light. To
attract the tall bitch's attention he made a soft, whining sound.
At the unexpected noise behind her the bitch wheeled like lightning.
At sight of the big wolf the hair rose along her back, her fangs bared
themselves dangerously, and she growled a deep note of challenge. For
some seconds the wolf thought she would fly at him,; but he stood
motionless, tail drooping humbly, tongue hanging a little way from his
lips, a soft light in his eyes. Then he sat back upon his haunches,
let his tongue hang out still farther, and drooped his head a little
to one side--the picture of conciliation and deference.
The long-jawed bitch had never before seen a wolf, but she recognized
him at once as a natural enemy. There was something in his attitude of
unoffending confidence, however, which made her hesitate to attack,
although he was plainly a trespasser. As she eyed him, she felt her
anger melting away. How like he was to certain big, strong dogs which
she had seen once or twice in her wanderings with the peddler! and how
unlike to the diminutive, yelping curs of the settlement! Her
bristling hairs smoothed themselves, the skin of her jaws relaxed and
set itself about her teeth in a totally different expression; her
growling ceased, and she gave an amicable whine. Diffidently the two
approached each other, and in a few minutes a perfect understanding
was established.
That night they hunted sheep together. In the joy of comradeship and
emulation, prudence was scattered to the winds, and they held a riot
of slaughter. When day broke a dozen or more sheep lay dead about the
pastures. And the wolf, knowing that men and dogs would soon be noisy
on their trail, led his new-found mate far back into the wilderness.
III.
The tall bitch, hating the settlement and all the folk therein, was
glad to be quit of it. And she found the hunting of deer far more
thrilling than the tame pursuit of sheep. Slipping with curious ease
the inherited sympathies of her kind, she fell into the ways of the
wild kindred, save for a certain brusque openness which she never
succeeded in laying off.
For weeks the strangely mated pair drifted southward through the
bright New Brunswick spring, to come to a halt at last in a region to
their liking between the St. John and the Chiputneticook chain of
lakes. It was a land of deer and rabbits and ducks, with settlements
small and widely scattered; a land where never a wolf-snout had been
seen for half a hundred years. And here, on a thick-wooded hill-slope,
the wanderers found a dry cave and made it their den.
In due course the long-jawed bitch bore a litter of six sturdy whelps,
which throve amazingly. As they grew up they showed almost all wolf,
harking back to the type--save that in colour they were nearly black,
with a touch of tan in the gray of their under parts. When they came
to maturity, and were accredited hunters all, they were in general
larger and more savage than either of their parents, differing more
widely, one from another, than would the like number of full-blooded
wolves. The eight, when they hunted together, made a pack which, for
strength, ferocity, and craft, no like number of full-blooded wolves
in all Canada could have matched.
The long-jawed bitch, whose highly developed brain guided, for the
most part, the destinies of the pack, for a time kept them from the
settlement and away from the contact with men; and the existence of
wolves in the Chiputneticook country was not dreamed of among the
backwoods settlements. In this policy she was backed by the sagacity
and strength of her mate, under whose wide-arched skull was a clear
perception of the truth that man is the one master animal. But the
hybrid whelps, by some perversion of inherited instinct, hated man
savagely, and had less dread of him than either of their parents. More
than once was the authority of the leaders sharply strained to prevent
a disastrous attack upon some unsuspecting pair of lumbermen, with
their ox-team and their axes.
[Illustration: "THEY PROWLED AND HOWLED ABOUT THE DOOR."]
The second winter of the wolves in the Chiputneticook country proved a
very hard one--game scarce and hunting difficult; and toward the
end of February the pack drew in toward the settlements, in the hope
of more abundant foraging. Fate promptly favoured the move. Some
sheep, and a heifer or two, were easily killed, with no calamitous
result; and the authority of the leaders was somewhat discredited.
Three of the young wolves even went so far as to besiege a solitary
cabin, where a woman and some trembling children awaited the return of
the man. For two hideous moonlit hours they prowled and howled about
the door, sniffing at the sill, and grinning in through the low
window; and when the sound of bells came near they withdrew sullenly,
half-minded to attack the man and horse.
A few nights after this, when the pack was following together the
discouraging trail of a long-winded and wily buck, they crossed the
trail of a man on snow-shoes. This trail was fresher, and to the young
wolves it seemed to promise easier hunting. The leaders were
overruled, and the new trail was taken up with heat.
The trail was that of a gaunt, tan-faced backwoodsman, on his way to a
lumber camp a few miles down the other side of the lake. He was
packing a supply of light needfuls, of which the lumbermen had
unexpectedly run short, and he was pressing forward in haste to avoid
a second night on the trail. The pack was carried high on his powerful
shoulders, in a manner to interfere as little as possible with his
long, snow-shoeing stride. In one hand he carried his axe. From under
the brim of his coonskin cap his piercing gray eyes kept watch with a
quiet alertness--expecting no danger, indeed, and fearing none, but
trained to cool readiness for every vicissitude of the wild.
He was travelling through a stretch of heavy timber, where the
moonlight came down in such scant streaks that he had trouble in
picking a clear path, when his ear was caught by an unwonted sound far
behind him. He paused to listen, no unwonted sound being matter of
indifference to them who range the wood. It came again, long-drawn and
high and cadenced. The big woodsman looked surprised. "I'd 'a' took my
oath," said he to himself, "ther' wa'n't a wolf in New Brunswick! But
I knowed the deer'd bring 'em back afore long!" Then, unconcernedly,
he resumed his tramp, such experience as he had had with wolves in the
West having convinced him that they would not want to meddle with a
man.
In a few minutes, however, the instinct of the woods awoke in him
suddenly, and told him that it was not some buck, but himself, whom
the hunting pack were trailing. Then the sound came again, perceptibly
nearer, though still far off. The woodsman gave a grunt of impatience,
angry to think that any four-foot creature of the forest should
presume to hunt _him_. But the barest prudence told him that he should
make haste for the open. Under protest, as it were, he broke into a
long trot, and swerved to the right, that he might sooner reach the
lake.
As he ran, the novel experience of feeling himself pursued got on his
nerves, and filled him with rage. Were there not plenty of deer in the
woods? he thought, indignantly. He would teach the vermin a lesson.
Several times he was on the point of stopping and waiting, to have it
out with them as soon as possible. But wisdom prevailed, and he pushed
on to the open. On the lake, the moonlit snow was packed hard, and the
running good. About a mile from shore a little, steep, rocky island,
upthrusting itself boldly, suggested to the woodsman that if his
pursuers were really going to have the audacity to attack him, it
might be well to have his back to a rock, that he might not be
surrounded. He headed for the island, therefore, though with protest
in his heart. And just as he got to it the wolves emerged from cover,
and darted out upon the shining level.
"Looks like they really meant it!" growled the big woodsman, loosing
his pack-strap, and setting his jaws for a fight.
When the pack came near he was astonished first at the stature and
dark colour of its members, and he realized, with a sudden fury, that
the outcome was not so assured as he had taken for granted it would
be. Perhaps he would never see camp, after all! Then he was further
astonished to note that one of the pack-leaders looked like a dog. He
shouted, in a voice of angry command; and the onrushing pack
hesitated, checked themselves, spread apart. From that dominating
voice it was evident that this was a creature of power--not to be
attacked carelessly, but to be surrounded.
That voice of command had thrilled the heart of the long-jawed bitch.
Something in it reminded her of the dead peddler, who had been a
masterful man. She would have none of this hunting. But she looked at
each of her savage whelps, and knew that any attempt to lead them off
would be worse than vain. A strange hatred began to stir within her,
and her fangs bared toward them as if they, not the man against the
rock, were the enemy. She looked again at the man, and saw the bundle,
so like a peddler's pack, at his feet! Instantly her heart went out to
him. She was no longer a wolf, but a dog; and there was her
master--not her old master, but such a one as he had been. At his
side, and fighting his foes, was her place. Like a flash, she darted
away from her companions, stopped a few feet in front of the ready
woodsman, turned about, and faced the pack with a savage growl. Her
hair was stiffly erect from neck to tail; her long, white teeth were
bared to the roots; her eyes were narrowed to slits of green flame;
she half-crouched, ready to spring in mad fury and tear the throat of
any beast which should try to hurt the man.
As for the woodsman, he knew dogs, and was not greatly surprised at
his strange ally. At her sudden approach he had swung his axe in
readiness, but his cool eye had read her signals aright. "Good dog!"
he said, with cheerful confidence. "We'll lick the varmints!"
But the young wolves went wild with rage at this defection and
defiance, and rushed in at once. They sprang first upon the bitch;
though one, rushing past, leaped venomously at the woodsman's throat.
This one got the axe in his skull, and dropped without a sound.
Meanwhile, the old wolf, who had been holding back in uncertainty, had
made his decision. When he saw his mate attacked, his doubts vanished,
and a red haze for an instant went over his eyes. These unnatural
whelps that attacked her--he suddenly saw them, not as wolves at all,
but as dogs, and hated them with a deadly hate. Silently he fell upon
the nearest, and tore him savagely. He was too late, however, to save
his mistress. The long-jawed bitch, for all her strength and her
valiant spirit, was overwhelmed by her powerful offspring. One she had
killed, and for one she had crunched a leg-joint to splinters; but now
she lay mangled and still under the struggle. The brute whose
leg-joint she had smashed dragged out from the _melee_; and her
faithful mate, the wide-skulled old wanderer wolf, found himself in
the death-grapple with three raging adversaries, each fairly his match
for weight and strength. True wolf, he fought in silence; but in his
antagonists the mixed breed came out, and they fought with yelps and
snarls.
At this juncture, fortunately for the old wolf, the woodsman's
understanding eye had penetrated the whole situation. He saw that the
black-haired beasts were the common enemy; and he fell upon the three
with his axe. His snow-shoes he had kicked off when making ready for
the struggle. In his mighty grasp the light axe whirled and smote with
the cunning of a rapier; and in a few seconds the old wolf, bleeding
but still vigorous, found himself confronting the man across a heap of
mangled black bodies. The man, lowering his axe, looked at the
bleeding wolf with mingled doubt and approbation. The wolf glared back
for an instant,--fear, hate, and grief in the green gleam of his
eyes,--then turned and fled, his pace accelerated by the cheerful yell
which the man sent after him.
"He's got the sand, sure!" muttered the woodsman, to himself, wiping
his axe. "Glad I didn't hev to knock him on the head, too!"
Then turning about, he saw the disabled whelp trying to sneak off,
and, with unerring aim, threw his axe. The black mongrel sank with a
kick, and lay still. The woodsman got out his pipe, slowly stuffed it
with blackjack, and smoked contemplatively, while he stood and
pondered the slain. He turned over the bodies, and patted the fur of
the long-jawed bitch, which had so splendidly turned back to her
traditions in the time of need. As he thought, the main elements of
the story unfolded themselves to him. Considerately he carried the
limp body, and securely buried it under a heap of stones on the
island. The rest he cached carelessly, intending to return and skin
them on the morrow.
"Them black pelts'll be worth somethin', I reckon!" he said to himself
with satisfaction as he took up his pack.
The Homeward Trail
In the lumber camp, far back upon the lonely headquarters of the
Quah-Davic, there was the stir of something unusual afoot. It was
Christmas Eve, and every kerosene lamp, lantern, and candle that the
camp could boast, was blazing. The little square windows gleamed
softly through the dust and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the
cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night,
the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of
light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the
doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after
their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot
molasses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp,
was wearing itself to a dull red glow; and the air that rushed out
with the light from the open door was heavy with the smell of wet
woollens, wet larrigans, and wet leather. Many of the men were wearing
nothing on their feet but their heavy, home-knit socks of country
yarn; but in these they did not hesitate to come out upon the dry
snow, rather than trouble themselves to resume their massive
foot-gear.
Before the door, in the spread of the light, stood a pair of sturdy,
rough-coated gray horses, hitched to a strong box sled, or "pung." The
bottom of the pung was covered thick with straw, and over the broad,
low seat were blankets, with one heavy bearskin robe. Into the space
behind the seat a gaunt, big-shouldered man was stowing a haunch of
frozen moose-meat. A lanky, tow-haired boy of fifteen was tucking
himself up carefully among the blankets on the left-hand side of the
seat. The horses stood patient, but with drooping heads, aggrieved at
being taken from the stable at this unwonted hour. In the pale-blue,
kindly, woods-wise eyes of both the man and the boy shone the light of
happy anticipation. They seemed too occupied and excited to make much
response to the good-natured banter of their comrades, but grinned
contentedly as they hastened their preparations for departure. The man
was Steve Williams, best axe-man and stream-driver in the camp; the
boy, young Steve, his eldest son, who was serving as "cookee," or
assistant to the camp cook. The two were setting out on a long night
drive through the forest to spend Christmas with their family, on the
edge of the lonely little settlement of Brine's Brook.
When all was ready, the big-shouldered woodsman slipped into the seat
beside his son, pulled the blankets and the bearskin all about him,
and picked up the reins from the square dashboard. A sharp _tchk_
started the horses, and, amid a chorus of shouts,--good nights and
Merry Christmases, and well-worn rustic pleasantries,--the loaded pung
slid forward from the light into the great, ghost-white gloom beyond.
The sled-bells jangled; the steel runners crunched and sang frostily;
and the cheerful camp, the only centre of human life within a radius
of more than twenty miles, sank back behind the voyagers. There was
the sound of a door slamming, and the bright streak across the snow
was blotted out. The travellers were alone on the trail, with the
solemn ranks of trees and the icy-pointed stars.
They were well prepared, these two happy Christmas adventurers, to
face the rigours of the December night. Under their heavy
blanket-coats were many thicknesses of homespun flannel. Inside their
high-laced, capacious "shoe-packs" were several pairs of yarn socks.
Their hands were covered by double-knit home-made mittens. Their
heads were protected by wadded caps of muskrat fur, with flaps that
pulled down well over the ears. The cold, which iced their eyelashes,
turned the tips of their up-turned coat-collars and the edges of their
mufflers to board, and made the old trees snap startlingly, had no
terrors at all for their hardy frames. Once well under way, and the
camp quite out of sight, they fell to chatting happily of the surprise
they would give the home folks, who did not expect them home for
Christmas. They calculated, if they had "anyways good luck," to get
home to the little isolated backwoods farmhouse between four and five
in the morning, about when grandfather would be getting up by
candle-light to start the kitchen fire for mother, and then go out and
fodder the cattle. They'd be home in time to wake the three younger
children (young Steve was the eldest of a family of four), and to add
certain little carven products of the woodsman's whittling--ingenious
wooden toys, and tiny elaborate boxes, filled with choicest globules
of spruce gum--to the few poor Christmas gifts which the resourceful
and busy little mother had managed to get together against the
festival. As they talked these things over, slowly and with frugal
speech, after the fashion of their class, suddenly was borne in upon
them a sense of the loneliness of the home folks' Christmas if they
should fail to come. Under the spell of this feeling, a kind of
inverted homesickness, their talk died into silence. They sat
thinking, and listening to the hoarse jangle of their bells.
In such a night as this, few of the wild kindreds were astir in the
forest. The bears, raccoons, woodchucks, and chipmunks were snugly
"holed up," and sleeping away the great white cold. The deer and moose
were in their well-trodden "yards," for the snow was deep. The
travellers knew that there were plenty of wood-mice astir,--that if
there had been light enough they would have seen their delicate trails
wandering everywhere among the trees. But the jangling of the
sled-bells was enough to keep all shy beasts at a distance. Only the
porcupine was quite undaunted by the strange sounds. One came out into
the middle of the road, and stood there seemingly to dispute passage.
The boy, in whom primal instincts were still dominant, was for getting
out and killing the insolent little bristler. But the father turned
the team aside, and gracefully yielded the road, saying: