diagonally upward toward the ledges. Never mind the trail at your feet
now; it will soon begin to twist, because a fox never goes straight
to his day bed, and you should see the turn before you come to it. So
look far ahead, and go carefully; don’t click the snowshoes or let
your clothing scrape on a frozen twig. See, the trail turns sharp to
the left, and beyond that to the right. There he is! a flash of ruddy
color, as Eleemos slips away from the log on which he was curled up
in the sun. He saw us before we saw him, though he was more or less
asleep. Had he not waited to learn who was coming, you would not have
caught even a glimpse of him. Now he half circles to get our wind, for
like most animals he trusts his nose above all other senses. There
are fleeting glimpses of fur as he passes an opening or halts behind
a windfall that hides all but his ears; then he heads away in swift
jumps, his brush quivering nervously, and disappears in thick cover. No
use to follow; you will not see that fox again.
The older foxes are mating now, and their trails are amazingly
devious. Ordinarily Eleemos leaves a plain story in the snow; but if
you attempt to read it at a time when he is cajoling a mate, or in a
region where his enemies, the wolves, have just been hunting, you will
be at your wits’ end to untangle the puzzle. Aside from his courting
or hunting habits, every fox has times or moods when his actions are
humanly incomprehensible. Last week, for example, I found the trail of
a fox that had taken one of Bob’s wolf baits; but instead of eating
it he carried it off in his mouth, taking a very erratic course, and
setting the bait down here or there to have another look at it. Once he
dropped it under a drooping fir tip, crept completely around the fir,
and crouched to watch the thing from hiding, as a kitten plays with a
paralyzed mouse. Then he carried it hither and yon over the crookedest
trail I ever tried to follow, sometimes trotting quietly, again rushing
away as if something were chasing him, now and then squatting to look
at his prize as it lay immobile under his nose. Though I had a perfect
tracking snow, which showed every footprint of the fox and every
resting place of the bait, what with his crisscrosses and back-tracking
I could not trace him a straight mile from the starting point, and I
left him without the faintest notion of where he was heading or what
he would do with his stolen morsel.
That bait, by the way, was an odd thing for any fox to uncover in
his familiar woods. It was invented in an idle, lunatic moment after
the wolves had refused to go near a variety of natural baits, and
immediately it brought forth the fantastic fruits of lunacy by becoming
excellent “medicine.” It was the size of a teacup; it was compounded of
meat scraps held together by melted lard; just before it hardened, it
was rolled in powdered fish skins; then the tail feather of a crow was
stuck into it, as a marker on the snow. From beginning to end of the
alchemy no human hand touched it to leave a suspicious odor. No doubt
the queer but appetizing thing was enough to puzzle any fox, making him
cut strange capers; but I was unable to generalize about its effect on
a canny beast, because the next fox that took a similar bait not only
ate it on the spot, but licked up every crumb and looked about for more.
As we resume our course after seeing Eleemos, we run into another
trail, which confuses us by its odd appearance until we read that it
was made by a pair of foxes, male and female, that were carefully
stepping in each other’s tracks. They came over the ridge one behind
the other, not heading for the den, but approaching the lake by
endless roundabouts, stopping here or there to leave a tangle of tracks
which record some little comedy. Instead of trying to read the puzzle,
which is beyond all woodcraft, I sketch a portion of the trail just as
the foxes left it,--so:
[Illustration: _A Pretty Crisscross_
Sketch of the trail of a pair of foxes coming from _a_, at the right,
and going at _b_. Arrow points indicate the direction of the trail;
opposite points where a fox went off at a tangent, and returned,
stepping carefully in his own tracks. Single lines show where the foxes
followed one behind the other; double lines Where they ran side by
side. From _a_ to _b_ is about two hundred yards in a straight line.
Note that, when the foxes end their crisscross, they head away in the
direction they were holding when they first appeared.]
On the farther side of the ridge, as we turn downward to a cedar swamp,
we begin to cross other trails, each with a tale to tell if one
follows it far enough. But the winter day is too short; we must hurry
if we are to learn what the wolves were doing. Here is where a solitary
Canada lynx passed, leaving round pugs like enormous cat tracks. His
trail gives a curious impression of mingled cunning and stupidity;
it is wavering, sneaky, suspicious, like all cat trails. Since it is
heading our way, we follow it through the swamp, to see how Upweekis
stalks a hare, before climbing the next ridge. Here in a wind-swept
spot a few wood mice have ventured up from their tunnels under the
snow; and red squirrels--_’sh!_ there’s one now.
Meeko was hidden in a spruce as we approached, and we would never have
seen him had he kept still. Being packed full of curiosity, he cannot
be quiet, but must run down his tree to see a man, no doubt the first
biped of that kind he has ever met. He begins to scold when we stand
motionless, telling him nothing, and I answer him by talking squirrel
talk between lips and teeth. Meeko listens in amazed silence; his eyes
seem to enlarge, to snap fire; then, as if he had discovered something
of vast importance, he leaps jabbering from the tree and scurries away
in breakneck fashion. At his summons a second squirrel tumbles out
from under a log; whereupon I talk more gibberish, and two more come
rushing down the hill. From a sugar maple comes a volley of questions,
protests, expostulations. A squirrel is up there who thinks he is being
neglected; when he can stand his isolation no longer he comes down to
join the crowd. That makes five in this small spot, and we hear more
voices in the distance, shrill, querulous voices, demanding the news or
scolding about it, whatever it may be.
The five visible squirrels are running in erratic circles, drawing
nearer to the strange creature that puzzles and irritates them, till
one scurries up my leg almost to my waist, where he loses courage and
leaps off, scared but chattering. At this they all scatter and climb
different trees, stopping at the level of my eyes, where they jump up
and down on the same spot, crying _kilch! kilch!_ as they jump. Then,
for they are a rattle-headed folk, they forget curiosity and take to
chasing or punishing one poor, squealing wretch who, they think, caused
all this ado about nothing.
There is life here, you see, and in the snow at your feet is the record
of it, more interesting by far than any book of natural history. So
with senses all alert we move onward to the rhythmic swish and click of
the snowshoes, mile after lonely mile, now over mighty hardwood ridges
that probably never before were marked by a man’s footprints, again
pushing through dense evergreen thickets to break out on the silent
expanse of a caribou barren, a beaver pond, an unnamed lake; and hardly
a rood of all this ground but offers a trail to follow and a story to
read. Here is good hunting.
As we follow down a ridge in the late afternoon, we get one shock and
meet with the only nerve-testing adventure which this big, lonely
wilderness can furnish. There is no game in sight; the woods are
still, the snow unmarked by any trail; but we are moving cautiously,
lifting the snowshoes so as to avoid all noise. Somewhere on that
densely wooded hillside across the valley is a deer yard; our eyes
are searching far ahead, trying to pick up a moving shadow, when with
startling suddenness comes a rumble, a roar, a violent upheaval of
snow, and out from underfoot bursts a whirring, booming thing that
scares us stiff. Through the flurry of snow the thing looks like a bomb
and sounds like an explosion; but--we laugh at our fright--it is only a
bird, a grouse, who is making all that commotion. Seksagadagee, Little
Thunder-maker, the Indians call him, and now you know why: he has a
thunderclap way of startling you at times, and in the spring his hollow
drumming has a suggestion of distant thunder. This one, having eaten
his fill of birch buds, had swooped into the snow for the night, as
grouse often do before the big owls begin to hunt, and I had put one
of the snowshoes fairly over him before seeing the hole he made when he
went in.
That hole is scarcely noticeable even now, for no sooner was it made
than the falling snow almost filled it again. Beneath it is a tunnel,
cloven by the bird’s plunge, which slants downward and makes a sharp
turn to the left. At the end is, or was, a little chamber where
Seksagadagee intended to sleep warm, out of eyeshot of hunting owls,
with a blanket of snow all around him.
There he is now, cuddled against the stem of a big spruce, where he
is hard to find. He is motionless, like a knob of the tree, but he is
looking back alertly to see what startled him. At sight of his plump
breast the thought of food replaces natural history; my revolver comes
up in line with his head. He will be a rare _bonne bouche_, and the
wilderness must feed its wanderers--but wait! Grouse are scarce here,
as they are at home this year, having gone through a wet breeding
season which killed most of the chicks, after enduring a pest of
goshawks that came down from the north and harried the old birds all
winter. That is why we have crossed but one grouse track to-day, though
we have traversed miles of good cover since sunrise.
It seems a pity to take this lonesome fellow. When you kill a bird he
is dead, and makes no more trails. “Well, Little Thunder-maker, you
and your poults have had a hard enough rub with hawks and foxes, and
these big woods seem to need you. Good-by and good luck!” I call, and
we break even. But I was more scared than he was. The bomb paralyzed me
for a moment, exploding so suddenly; while his booming flight said that
he was master of his own motions.
In the valley beyond, just before entering the deer yard, we cross the
trail of the wolves we are seeking,--six powerful brutes that keep
together at this point, traveling in single file till they reach the
hillside with its tangle of deer paths, when they spread out to sweep
the cover from end to end. The air was northerly last night; they are
hunting upwind after their usual fashion. We must hurry now; it is
growing late, and we have one more story to read from the trails, a
story which I wish had not been written. Ah, see that!
Yonder are holes in the snow where two deer (probably a doe and her
fawn of last spring) rested near one of the paths of their winter yard;
and up the path comes a wolf, stealing along like a cat. That fellow
is hunting keenly; but though near enough to smell his game under
ordinary conditions, the trail shows that he has no inkling of the two
animals only a few yards away. They are hidden by the snow a little
to one side of his course, which will take him past them if he keeps
on as he is going. Fortunately for the deer, they give out very little
scent when resting; and since a wolf does not follow foot scent, he
must run almost over them before he knows where they are. See, he has
passed without smelling them; they will be safe in another minute if
they hold still. There! too bad! too bad! The deer have caught the rank
wolf smell, and a single whiff stampedes them. As they jump, the wolf
catches the body scent and whirls toward them. Two great bounds bring
him into their trail; he is after them in a terrific rush.
Poor deer! it is all up with them now; they have no chance with that
grim brute at their heels. Luckily he will kill only one, leaving the
other, for deer are not like crowding sheep; they scatter when a wolf
attacks the herd. But what is this?
A short run, and the wolf leaves the hot trail and speeds to a distant
part of the yard, hurling himself forward by extraordinary bounds, as
if life depended on getting somewhere else on the instant.
That is just like a wolf. He has room for only one notion or impulse at
a time; when a new notion or a stronger impulse comes into his head, it
drives out the other. Chasing his game and gaining on it at every jump,
this wolf received some new, imperative summons and rushed to answer
it. Following him, we find where another wolf joins his headlong rush;
others come sweeping in from either side; the whole pack goes leaping
alongside a fresh trail left by a running buck and a single big wolf.
We understand now the uproar that shattered last night’s stillness. It
was the trail-cry of a wolf, followed by the pack’s terrifying answer.
As a rule, wolves hunt in silence; when they run a deer there is seldom
a yelp from beginning to end of the chase. Occasionally, however, when
a solitary wolf starts big game and wants help, he utters a peculiar
cry; and that cry, coming from the mother wolf who leads the pack or
from the old dog wolf who hunts by himself, rouses up a wild impulse,
electric, irresistible. At the tingling summons every wolf in the pack
leaves his own affairs, even the food he has just caught, and darts
away to join the hunt. As the scattered brutes draw together, there is
confused, uproarious howling. The running game, thinking only of the
wolf behind him, hears a threatening clamor on all sides; he wavers,
halts, turns, and the chase is over. Such is the psychology of a wolf’s
hunting, as one hears it in the night or reads it from the snowy trail
next morning.
The buck is heading for the nearest lake, where running is easier and
he has the advantage, since his sharp hoofs cling to the ice where the
wolves’ feet slip and slither; but the lake is half a mile away, and
he will never reach it. I have followed a score of just such trails
as this, and whether in woods or on open ice I have not yet found one
which said that a buck could keep ahead of these fleet brutes more than
a few minutes.
That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than
to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping,
they refuse (in their hunting, at least) to keep up a fast clip for
any length of time; and in witnessing one of their hunts I had the
impression that any buck should be able to get away from them. In deep
snow he seems to have quite as much speed as they have; on the ice he
has more, and he might win in any kind of footing if he would only
put his mind into his running. Unhappily, that is precisely what a
white-tailed deer will not or cannot do when a wolf is after him. When
a caribou sniffs a wolf he racks away at a slashing pace, keeping it up
until he is out of danger, and no wolf on earth can catch him in a fair
run; but a deer, after a magnificent burst of speed which shows his
power, always stops to look around, to stamp, to threaten, to fidget.
At times he gives the impression that, in a dazed sort of way, he is
puzzling his head to know what the brutes behind him are doing or why
they do not go about their own affairs. It is not the wolf’s extra
speed, I think, but the deer’s mental paralysis which makes the chase
so short. But enough of psychology! Here is a plain trail to follow.
At this point the buck and the big wolf that jumped him are running
evenly, one behind the other, with no great exertion on either side.
Farther on the buck slows down, his jumps shorten; then the wolf closes
in, the buck turns to fight. See, as he turns, how the pack rolls in
behind him, cutting off his escape, while the big wolf holds him in
front. Though they have the buck at their mercy, the powerful brutes
do not spring upon the game at bay, for that is not a wolf’s way; he
watches his chance to kill by stealth, as he hunts by stealth. Here are
depressions which show where two wolves crouched within easy-springing
distance; behind them is a hole where the buck came down from a jump.
He must have leaped clean over the crouching wolves as he broke away
for the lake.
The trail is marvelously interesting now; it tells of things that
happen in the night, things that few human eyes have ever seen. Some
of the pack are racing on either side of the buck, while a single big
wolf follows jump for jump at his heels. Here the buck is thrown fairly
when the following wolf catches a flying foot; but he is up and away
with the same motion that rolls him completely over. There is the story
in the snow, as plain as English when you know how to read it. Though
a few red drops mark the trail, the buck is hardly scratched; the big
wolf has not yet had the chance for which he is watching. Again the
buck is thrown, and this time he stays down. There he lies, just as
he fell! He was not quick enough on his feet the second time, and the
big wolf closed his jaws on the small of the back. That is one way of
killing, but not the common way when the approach is from behind. The
wolf was looking for a different chance, I think, but took this like a
flash when he saw it.
We examine the wound carefully, cutting away the skin so as to see more
clearly. Only the deep fang-marks show; the flesh is not eaten here, or
even torn; yet under the muscles the bones grate like a broken hinge.
The wolves eat a little from the hind quarters, and two of them lap a
bit at the throat without tearing it. There is only a slight puncture,
under which a few red drops are frozen in a hollow lapped by a wolf’s
tongue. So far as we can discover, the only serious wound on the body
is that broken back, with its mute testimony to the power of a timber
wolf’s snap. The trail shows no sign of quarreling when the wolves
feed or when they go off, their hunger satisfied, to roam the woods
like lazy dogs.
There is a different kind of hunting ahead now, a hunt to save the deer
by shooting their enemies; but the short winter day is almost done,
and we must wait for the morrow. You will be told that it is vain to
follow a wolf in this densely wooded region; that his senses are so
much keener than yours that you will never find him by trailing; that
your only chance of killing him is to go abroad at all hours and trust
to a chance meeting. One can understand such counsel, born of repeated
failure, without quite agreeing with it. Only yesterday I found the
fresh kill of a wolf pack in the early morning, and before noon I had
trailed the brutes to where they were resting for the day under a
ledge. The fascinating thing was that they had no notion I was anywhere
near them when the first massive gray head rose above the bushes to
sniff suspiciously. Such a chase is out of the question to-day; the
light fades, and camp is calling.
The snowshoe trail stretches far behind, giving a sense of comfort
in these strange woods, because one cannot well be lost with his own
snowshoe slots to guide him. But the back trail is weary miles long,
and, judging by our course since morning (which was first southerly,
you remember, then northeast), the home lake can hardly be more than
an hour or so to westward. No need to look at your compass; there’s the
sunset. So into the sunset we go, and after the sunset is the twilight,
with one great star like a lamp hung over it.
It is dusk, and numberless stars are glittering in the frosty air, when
we break out of the gloomy woods near the foot of the lake. As we move
campward, more swiftly now over level going, a long howl rolls down
from the hills over which our trail has just been drawn. There is a
moment of quiet on nature’s part, of tense listening on ours; then the
rally cry of the wolves goes shivering through the night.
That pack, or another one, must have been nearer than we thought.
Perhaps they saw us as we hurried down the last slope through deepening
shadows. No doubt they will soon be sniffing our trail. In the early
evening a young wolf is apt to raise a great howl when he runs across
the fresh trail of a man; not because he knows what it is, but for
precisely the opposite reason. “Will they follow or chase us?” you ask;
which shows that you have been reading wolf stories. “No, these big
timber wolves never hunt a man,” I answer, and that answer is true.
Nevertheless, your stride lengthens; there is a feeling of lightness in
your heels; you are a little nervous, and your scalp is tight; wait a
bit.
A fallen pine stub offers an inviting seat under the shore, where we
sit down to “rest a pipe,” listening alertly to the wolves, trying to
gauge their course for the next hunting,--their hunting and mine, for I
shall surely follow them at daybreak. Aha! hear that.
An awful row, wailing, ululating, breaks out from the hill above us,
where young wolves of the pack are clamoring over our trail. They have
found it, all right. One can easily fancy now that they are coming
on the jump; but they are not even headed this way, never fear. They
are merely puzzled or excited over a new thing. Later, when they grow
quiet, some of them may steal down to have a look at us; but they will
take good care that we do not have a look at them. Their howling,
especially when heard by a solitary man at night, has a strangely
disturbing quality, rasping our civilized nerves like sandpaper. If you
are not accustomed to the cry, panic and imaginary terrors are bred
of it, and all the foolish stories of wolf ferocity you ever heard
come crowding back to demand, “Now will you listen to us? Now will you
believe?” No, not a bit. Every ferocious wolf story I ever heard (every
American story, at least) is an invention absurdly at variance with the
wolf’s character. So we finish the pipe, slowly for discipline, and
move campward through the witchery of the wilderness night. The wolves
have ceased their howling; the world is intensely still.
A ruddy gleam breaks suddenly from the dark bulk of trees; and Bob,
hearing the click of snowshoes, comes out from the fire where he has
been keeping supper warm for the greater pleasure of sharing it.
“Welcome home, b’y! What luck?” he calls; and something in his voice
tells me that he, too, has good news, which waits only an occasion for
telling. The occasion comes as we eat leisurely, thankfully, before
the glowing birch logs; while night gathers close about our little
“Commoosie,” and our fire makes the wilderness home.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY
In my “Benacadie,” or home camp, one summer was a cow, very much out of
focus, that had been led far through the woods, and then, in a lunatic
moment, had been rolled into a bateau and rowed across the big lake.
That last was a brave adventure, especially when the cow, not knowing
why she should be bundled up like a sack, kicked free of the straps,
heaved up on wobbly legs, and tried to climb out of the boat; but that
is not the comedy.
Not far from “Benacadie,” on the other side of a wooded ridge, was a
beaver meadow sparsely overgrown with ash and alder, where the cow was
tied out every morning in blue-joint grass up to her eyes. It was fine
pasturage, and the cow, being a sensible creature when she was not in
a boat, proceeded to make cream of it. Before the season was over she
became a pet and, like most pets, something also of a nuisance. She had
a genius for freedom and diet; no sooner had she slipped her halter
than she would come begging for cake at the kitchen. She would poke her
head into open doors at unseemly hours of the night, or _moo_ into open
windows at cockcrow in the morning. When she had eaten all she wanted
of grass or browse, then her thoughts turned to pastures new, and she
would follow any foot-loose man wherever he might be going.
In camp that summer was a cookee and handy man, who had been hired to
do whatever anybody else or the cook shied at. It was a loose kind
of contract, but Cookee kept his part of it admirably, stopping his
whistle to answer our lumberman’s hail of “Cookee here!” and tackling
any job with unfailing good humor. Though he got the burnt end of every
stick, he believed he was born lucky until the bear chased him; after
that he was sure of it. One of his jobs was to mog over to the beaver
meadow before sundown, and lead the cow home to her shack for the
night. She was a precious old beast, the only one of her kind in the
whole region, and because there were bear signs in the woods we were
taking no chances. Her owner said she would be worth a hundred dollars
if we did not bring her back; and that is a lot of money to put into a
bear bait.