bars, and reached the barn all blowing. There I slid off to swing the
door open; but I didn’t have sense enough left to get out of the way
of it. My horse was crazy with fright; hardly had I started the door
when he bolted against it and knocked me flat. At his heels came father
on the jump, and whisked through the doorway, thinking me safe inside.
That is the moment which comes back to me most keenly, the moment
when he disappeared, and my heart went down with a horrible sinking.
The thought of being left out there alone fairly paralyzed me for a
moment; then I yelled like a loon, and father came out faster than he
went in. He picked me up like a sack, ran into the barn, and slammed
the door to. ‘Safe, boy, safe!’ was all he said; but his voice had a
queer crack when he said it.
“Then we realized, all of a sudden, that the wolves had quit their
howling. Inside the barn we could hear the horses wheezing; outside,
the world and everything in it was dead-still. Somehow that awful
stillness scared us worse than the noise; we could feel the brutes
coming at us from all sides. After watching through a window and
listening at cracks for a while, we made a break for the house, and got
there before the wolves could catch us.”
I have given only the outline and atmosphere of this wolf story, and it
is really too bad to spoil it so; for as my friend tells it, with vivid
or picturesque detail, it is very thrilling and all true so far as it
goes. After showing my appreciation by letting the tale soak into me, I
venture to ask, “Did you _see_ any wolves that night?”
“No,” he says, frankly, “I didn’t, and I didn’t want to. The howling
was plenty for me.”
And there you have it, a right good wolf story with everything properly
in it except the wolves. There were no wolf tracks about the sled when
father and son went back with guns in hand next morning; but there were
numerous fresh signs in the distant woods, and these with the howling
were enough to convince any reasonable imagination that only the speed
of two good horses saved two good men from death or mutilation.
Another friend of mine, a mining engineer in Alaska, is also quite
sure that wolves may be dangerous, and in support of this opinion he
quotes a personal experience. He went astray in a snowstorm one fall
afternoon, and it was growing dark when he sighted a familiar ridge,
beyond which was his camp. He was hurrying along silently, as a man
goes after nightfall, and had reached a natural opening with evergreens
standing thickly all about, when a terrific howling of wolves broke out
on a hillside behind him.
The sudden clamor scared him stiff. He listened a moment, his heart
thumping as he remembered all the wolf stories he had ever heard; then
he started to run, but stopped to listen again. The howling changed to
an eager whimper; it came rapidly on, and thinking himself as good as
a dead man he jumped for a spruce, and climbed it almost to the top.
Hardly was he hidden when a pack of wolves, dark and terrible looking,
swept into the open and ran all over it with their noses out, sniffing,
sniffing. Suspicion was in every movement, and to the watcher in the
tree the suspicion seemed to point mostly in his direction.
Presently a wolf yelped, and began scratching at a pile of litter on
the edge of a thicket. The pack joined him at his digging, dragged out
a carcass of some kind from where they had covered it, ate what they
wanted, and slipped away into the woods. But once, at some vague alarm,
they all stopped eating while two of the largest wolves came slowly
across the opening, heads up and muzzles working, like pointers with
the scent of game in their nose. And then my friend thought surely
that his last night on earth had come, that the ferocious brutes would
discover him and hold him on his perch till he fell from cold or
exhaustion. Which shows that he, too, gets his notions of a wolf from
the story books.
By northern camp fires I have listened to many other wolf tales; but
these two seem to me the most typical, having one element of undoubted
truth, and another of unbridled imagination. That wolves howl at night
with a clamor that is startling to an unhoused man; that when pinched
by hunger they grow bold, like other beasts; that they have a little
of the dog’s curiosity, and much of the dog’s tendency to run after
anything that runs away,--all that is natural and wolflike; but that
they will ever chase a man, knowing that he is a man, seems very
doubtful to one who had always found the wolf to be as wary as any
eagle, and even more difficult of approach. In a word, one’s experience
of the natural wolf is sure to run counter to all the wolf stories.
For example, if you surprise a pack of wolves (rarely do they let
themselves be seen, night or day), they vanish slyly or haltingly or
in a headlong rush, according to the fashion of your approach; but if
ever they surprise you in a quiet moment, you have a rare chance to see
a fascinating bit of animal nature. The older wolves, after one keen
look, pass on as if you did not exist, and pretend to be indifferent so
long as you are in sight; after which they run like a scared bear for a
mile or two, as you may learn by following their tracks. Meanwhile some
young wolf is almost sure to take the part that a fox plays in similar
circumstances. He studies you intently, puzzled by your quietness,
till he thinks he is mistaken or has the wrong angle on you; then he
disappears, and you are wondering where he has gone when his nose is
pushed cautiously from behind a bush. Learning nothing there he draws
back, and now you must not move or even turn your head while he goes to
have a look at you from the rear. When you see him again he will be on
the other flank; for he will not leave this interesting new thing till
he has nosed it out from all sides. And to frighten him at such a time,
or to let him frighten you, is to miss all that is worth seeing.
Again, our northern wolf is like a dog in that he has many idle moments
when he wishes something would happen, and in such moments he would
rather have a bit of excitement than a bellyful of meat. During the
winter he lives with his pack, as a rule, following a simple and fairly
regular routine. At dusk the wolves stir themselves, and often howl
a bit; then they hunt and eat their one daily meal, after which they
roam idly over a wide territory, nosing into all sorts of places, but
holding a general direction toward their next hunting ground; for they
rarely harry the same covert two nights in succession. Before sunrise
they have settled on a good place to rest for the day; and it has
happened, on the few occasions when I have had time or breath enough
to trail wolves to their day bed, that I have always found them in a
sightly spot, where they could look down on a lake or a wide stretch of
country.
If from such a place of rest and observation the wolves see you
passing through their solitude, some of them are apt to follow you at
a distance, keeping carefully out of sight, till they find out who you
are or what you are doing. Should you pass near their day bed without
being seen or heard, they will surely discover that fact when they
begin to hunt at nightfall; and then a wolf, a young wolf especially,
will raise a great howl when he runs across your snowshoe trail; not
a savage or ferocious howl, so far as I can understand it, but a howl
with wonder in it, and also some excitement. It is as if the wolf that
found the trail were saying, “Come hither, all noses! Here’s something
new, something that you or I never smelled before. Woooo-ow-ow-ow!
what’s all this now?” And if the pack be made up mostly of young
wolves, you shall hear a wild chorus as they debate the matter of the
trail you have just left behind you.
Such an impression, of harmless animal excitement rather than of
ferocity, must surely be strengthened when you follow it up confidently
with an open mind. If instead of running away when you hear wolves
on your trail you steal back to meet them, the situation and the
consequent story will change completely. In some subtle way the brutes
seem to read your intention before you come within sight of them. They
may be ready to investigate you, but have no notion of being themselves
investigated; they melt away like shadows among deeper shadows, and you
are at a loss to know where they are even while their keen noses are
telling them all about you.
The European wolf, if one may judge him by a slight acquaintance, is
essentially like our timber wolf; but his natural timidity has been
modified by frequent famines, and especially by dwelling near unarmed
peasant folk who are mortally afraid of him. In the summer he lives
shyly in the solitudes, where he finds enough mice, grubs, and such
small deer to satisfy his appetite. In winter he is always hungry,
and when hunger approaches the starvation point he descends from his
stronghold to raid the farms. A very little of his raiding starts a
veritable reign of terror; every man, woman or child whom he meets
runs away, and presently he becomes bold or even dangerous. At least,
I can fancy him to be dangerous, having been in an Italian village
when a severe winter brought wolves down from the mountains, and when
terrified villagers related specific and horrible instances of wolf
ferocity. Whenever I searched for the brutes the natives would advise
or implore me not to venture into the forest alone. The rural guards
kept themselves carefully housed at night, and a single guard, though
armed with a rifle, would not enter the woods or cross open country
even by daylight for fear of meeting the wolf pack.
It was hard for a stranger to decide whether such terrors came from
bitter experience, or whether, like our own fear of the wolf, they
were the product of a lively imagination; but one was soon forced to
the conclusion that where was so much smoke there must be some fire
also. Moreover, as evidence of the fire, I found some official records
which indicate that the European wolf may be so crazed by hunger as to
kill and eat human beings. Such records inevitably pass into fireside
tales, repeated, enlarged, embellished, and thereafter the wolf’s
character is blackened forever. He is naturally a timid beast; but
his one evil deed, done in a moment of hunger, becomes typical of a
ferocious disposition. For, say what you will, the common man’s most
lasting impressions of the world are not reasonable, but imaginative;
they come not from observation, but from tales heard in childhood. That
is perhaps the reason why Indians, in dealing with their children,
always represent nature and nature’s beasts as peaceable and friendly.
Our pioneers brought many harrowing wolf tales with them to the New
World, and promptly applied them to the timber wolf, a more powerful
beast than his European relative, but wholly guiltless, I think, of
the charge of eating human flesh even in a season of famine. Neither
in our own country nor in Canada, so far as I can learn by searching,
is there a single trustworthy record to indicate that our wolves have
ever killed a man. Yet the tale is against them, and the consequence
is, when a belated traveler hears a clamor in the darkening woods, that
ferocity gets into his imagination and terror into his heels; he starts
on a hatless run for shelter, and appears with another blood-curdling
story of escape from a ravening pack of wolves.
In all such stories certain traits appear to betray a common and
romantic origin. Thus, the imaginary pack always terrifies you by
reason of its numbers; scores of grim shapes flit through shadowy woods
or draw a circle of green eyes to flash back the firelight. The real
pack is invariably small, since it consists of a single wolf family.
The mother wolf leads; the dog wolf is in the same neighborhood, but
commonly hunts by himself; with the mother go her last litter of cubs
and a few grown wolves of a former litter that have not yet found
their mates. From five to eight wolves make the ordinary pack. Where
game is plentiful (leading to large wolf families) ten or twelve may
occasionally follow the mother; but such a large pack is exceptional,
even in winter. In the subarctic region, where uncounted caribou move
north in spring or south in autumn, several different packs hang about
the flanks of the migrating herds; but never at such times do the
wolves unite or mass, and being well fed with the best of venison they
are uncommonly peaceable.
Another romantic trait of the terrible packs of the tale is that
they always howl when they charge home. It is one of the marked
characteristics of the real wolf that he is silent when stalking or
running down game of any kind. His howling has nothing to do with his
hunting, being reserved for social or other occasions; he wastes no
breath in noise, as hounds do, when he means to overtake anything.
Indeed, one of the most uncanny qualities of a wolf is the fleet,
soundless, mysterious way he has of appearing where he is least
expected. In the northern wilderness this is the typical way of it:
You are swinging along campward, following your lonely snowshoe trail
over ice-locked waters, through snow-filled woods, when there comes a
vague change or chill in the air. It is the moment when we say that
night is falling, when gray shadows rise from the lake to meet other
shadows flowing down from the hills; and that is the moment when you
can count most surely on hearing the first howl of a stirring wolf.
It is a creepy sound in such a place or moment, especially when it
is followed by the clamor of a pack, a cry that carries far over the
silent places, and that may come from the hills on either side or
from the trail behind you. However far away it may be, there is always
a menace in the wolf’s challenge; your nerves tingle as you stop to
listen.
If you believe your imagination now, the fierce outcry grows louder,
sweeps nearer; but if you trust your ears, you will know that it
remains stationary, dying away where it began. Those noisy brutes are
only proclaiming their ego, like awakened dogs; and having marked their
direction you move homeward again, noting the increasing tension of
the brief winter twilight, so different from the summer gloaming with
its velvet shadows, its thrush song, its lingering light. Presently
you have lost all thought of the distant wolves; if you remember them
at all, you are thinking of the morrow’s hunt, how you will go back
and search out their trail, when suddenly and most startlingly--there
they are! And always the disturbing part of such a meeting is this: the
wolves are behind you, in front of you, and on either side, before you
have the first inkling that they are anywhere near.
So open is the forest here, and so white the snow, that you fancied a
rabbit could hardly move without betraying himself to your eyes; yet
without noise or shadow of motion surely that is a wolf watching you
over a fallen log, where you can see only his eyes and his cocked
ears. On the other side of the trail a bush quivers as a wolf creeps
under it, but you catch no sure glimpse of him. Look behind you, and
a gray something vanishes; then the woods are motionless again. And
that is all you will see or hear of your ferocious wolf pack, unless,
perchance, you run away; in which event some cub-wolf that knows no
better may take a jump or two after you.
These timber wolves of the north are immensely interesting brutes,
tireless, powerful, unbelievably cunning. To follow their trail is
to have increasing respect for their keenness, their vim, their
hair-trigger way of meeting any emergency. Once when I was tracking a
solitary dog wolf, an uncommonly big brute, and lazy after eating his
fill of venison, I came out of the woods to a frozen lake, and saw him
ambling along near shore a few hundred yards ahead of me. He happened
to be passing under an icy ledge, utterly unsuspicious of man or
danger, when a bullet struck the ice, _ping!_ at his heels.
That was a range shot, a bit shy, and I expected him to give me another
chance; but he never even looked around to see where the _ping_ or the
_bang_ came from. Almost, it seemed, before the report could reach him
he had tried the ledge twice, only to find it overhigh for a standing
jump and too slippery to climb. Without an instant’s hesitation he
darted out on the lake for a flying start, whirled to the right-about,
came at the ledge, and went superbly over it into thick cover. The
ledge was over eight feet in the rise, and from the foot of it to his
take-off was another ten feet; but in a flash he had measured his leap
and taken it rather than expose himself any longer in the open.
Another time I saw a single wolf throw and kill a buck, a matter which
called for skill as well as strength, and he did it so easily that
one was left wondering what chance a man would have with a few brutes
of that kind rolling in upon him. In numbers or when made reckless by
hunger our timber wolves might well prove terrible enemies; but the
simple fact is that they have no desire to meet a man. They are afraid
of him, and avoid him even when they are hungry. Again and again, when
wolves have howled about my winter camp at night, I have gone out and
given them opportunity for a man hunt; but though they are much bolder
by night than by day, they have never, save in one peculiar instance,
shown any evidence of a hostile or dangerous disposition. And then they
scared me properly, making me know how a man might feel if he were
running with a pack of wolves at his heels.
The startling exception came one winter afternoon as I was crossing a
frozen lake in a snowstorm. It was almost dusk when I came out of the
woods, hurrying because I had far to go, and started fair across the
middle of the lake. Soon the wind was blowing the snowflakes in level
lines; what with snow and darkened air it became difficult to keep
one’s bearings, and in order to see my way better I edged in nearer and
nearer to the weather shore.
Two or three times, as I headed steadily up the lake, I had a vague
impression that something moved in the woods, and moved so as to keep
abreast of me; but the flying flakes interfered with clear vision till
I began to come under the lee of a point of evergreens. Then I surely
saw a creeping motion among the trees on my left, and stopped dead
in my tracks to watch it. The next instant the underbrush was ripped
open in a dozen places, and a pack of wolves rushed out. One turned
and loped swiftly between me and the point ahead; another that I dared
not watch sped down the lake, at a broad angle from the course of the
first; the rest spread into a fan-shaped formation that broadened
swiftly and must soon spring its ends together like a trap. In a
twinkling every avenue of escape to the woods was shut by a wolf; there
was left only a fight or a straightaway run across the ice.
[Illustration: “_The rest spread into a fan-shaped formation as they
came straight on._”]
The wolves were perhaps a hundred yards distant when they broke cover.
They came on easily, their heads low, some with a curious sidling
motion that presented a rough shoulder till the fangs had a chance
to snap. The brutes uttered no cry, not a howl of any kind. They had
been upwind from me when I came out of the woods, and I think now that
they mistook me in the storm for a deer or some other game animal;
but at the moment their rush looked dangerous, and their grim silence
was more terrifying than any clamor. Bending down, I threw off the
snowshoe straps for free footing and, as I straightened up, pulled a
heavy revolver from its sheath. Then I stood stock-still, which is the
most surprising thing you can do to any charging wild beast. He is so
accustomed to running away from danger himself, and to seeing other
beasts run away from it, that a motionless figure puzzles him, makes
him suspect that there must be a mistake somewhere.
From one end of the charging line a big wolf suddenly shot out at top
speed, circling to get behind me. I picked him as the one I must first
kill; but I would wait till the last moment for two reasons: because
shooting must be straight, there being only half as many bullets as
there were wolves; and because here was the chance of a lifetime to
learn whether a wolf, knowing what he was doing, would ever run into a
man. The mental process is slow and orderly now, but then it came and
went with a snowflake that swept before my eyes.
As the big wolf whirled in on the run, still some forty yards away,
the wind came fair from me to him; he got his first whiff of the man
scent, and with it a terrible shock, I think, since its effect was a
contortion which looked as if it might dislocate the brute’s back.
At the top of a jump he tried to check himself by a violent wriggle.
Down he came, his legs stiff as bars, and slid to his toes and leaped
straight up again with a wild yelp, as if I had shot him. Yet up to
that moment, when his nose told him what game he was running, I had not
stirred a muscle.
That single yelp stopped the rush as if by magic. Most of the pack
scattered on the instant; but two or three younger wolves that did
not understand their blunder hesitated a bit, with surprise written
all over them. Then they, too, caught the alarm, and the whole pack
went speeding for cover in immense bounds, which grew convulsive when
I began to play my part in the comedy. At the shot every flying brute
went up in the air, as if safety lay only in the clouds or on the other
side of the mountain.
Such are the real wolves. I see them yet, the snow powdering their
grizzled coats, streaking away like flushed quail and vanishing with
one last tremendous jump into the dusky woods, whenever I hear a good
wolf story.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
EARS FOR HEARING
One night in June I heard a new bird note, wonderfully clear and sweet,
but so dreamlike that it seemed some tiny creature had blown a flute
from elfland. The note came from far away, apparently; but I traced it
at last to a branch just over my head, where a pair of grosbeaks had
built their nest. There the male bird was singing near his brooding
mate, singing in his dreams, I think, for his song was like no other
that I ever heard from him.
The surprise of that dream song returned to me at dawn, one winter
morning, when I heard low, eager voices outside my “Commoosie,” and
crept out to find a family of partridges under the birds’ table.
Now a mother partridge has many notes, from the sibilant squeal of
anger to the deep _kroo-kroo_ that calls the chicks from hiding; but
these voices were quite different from all grouse sounds with which
I had grown familiar in the woods. They had what one might call an
intimate quality, musical, softly modulated, marvelously expressive.
When the partridges were gone, gliding away as if they had not meant
to be overheard, I spread the table abundantly, as usual; and that day
hardly a bird came without giving me at least one new note, perhaps
because I was for the first time really listening.
From that time forth the voices of these feeding birds were a
revelation to me, as I heard them close at hand. Surprise, confidence,
pleasure, resentment, hunger, loneliness, alarm,--a dozen different
emotions seemed to find ready expression, either in varied cries or by
modulations of a single note. In making mental register of this bird
“talk,” I became convinced that the ear needs more training than the
eye if one is to understand the wood folk or enter into the spirit
of their little comedy. Even if you turn mere ornithologist, with
an interest in feathers or species rather than in birds, hearing is
a better or surer sense than sight if you would name birds without
the needless barbarity of killing them for identification. Once you
recognize the peculiar quality of any bird’s voice, you may surely
name him at any season. He may change his plumage as he will, for youth
or age, for spring or winter; but he cannot change his natural voice,
and, like Peter’s, his speech bewrayeth him.
One morning, in that same winter camp where the grouse appeared, a
woodpecker sent a long call rattling across the frozen lake. The first
subtle feeling of spring was in the air. Deep under snow the sap began
to well upward from roots of the sugar maples to express itself in
coloring buds; and I fancy that something stirred upward from some root
of being in the woodpecker, also, to find expression in lusty drumming.
Ever since we made camp we had heard him or his fellows signaling,
answering, drilling their food out of frost-bound wood; but this call
was entirely different, and Bob’s keen ears were instantly turned to it.
“Aha! that chap wants something. Can ye answer him now?” he said; and
in his eye was a challenge.