of killing the loup-garou, but only of laying such a powerful charm on
their outlying fields that he could not break through to approach their
villages. With different emphasis the ancients call him “wolf-man,” the
moderns “man-wolf”; but both agree that while he runs in a beast’s skin
he looks precisely like a huge wolf; all but his eyes, which are human,
and which betray him.
Such was the superstition, hoary with the fear of ages, which came
moaning over the startled woods; and surely never were place and
hour more propitious for its reception. In the region where I camped
on a winter holiday the tracks of an enormous wolf had been seen
at intervals for years past; the rumor of him was in every lumber
camp, the fear of him in every village for fifty miles around. If
a man vanished in the woods and was never seen again, what but the
beast could have caught him and left no trace? At such a thought the
Habitant would cross himself, hitch nearer the fire, and, if you were
sympathetic, relate a blood-curdling tale of “_mon frère Bawteese_” or
of “_bonhomme Philorum_” to prove that the loup-garou was still abroad,
and terrible as ever.
The lone wolf ceased his cry, and presently in a different direction a
pack of wolves set up a hair-raising ululation. These were the brutes
that had called me out; after locating them for the morrow I went back
to camp and to sleep.
Before sunrise I was ready for the trail. Daylight is brave stuff.
The tingle in my skin was now one of joy at being alive on a hunting
morning, a joy that laughs aloud at oldwives’ fables. A few winter
birds, brave little northern birds, were greeting the new day cheerily;
the soundless woods were beautiful beyond words; the keen air was like
old wine in its effect, with this added virtue, that one could take as
much exhilaration as he pleased and still remain gloriously sober. So,
until night should again fall and catch me in the forest, my ancient
spine and modern brain agreed that the loup-garou was a myth, but
that out yonder was a wolf to challenge any man’s wind or woodcraft.
Ordinarily I let wild animals alone, preferring the work of God to that
of the taxidermist; but to-day some hunter was stalking in my moccasins
and, to say truth, rejoicing from toe to finger tip. “Not that I love
wolves less, but deer more. If I find that big brute, I will make an
end of his howling and deer killing.” Thus I promised myself, slipping
a heavy revolver on one side of my belt to balance an ax on the other.
Then, with a touch on various pockets to be sure that compass, knife,
matches and emergency ration were in place, I was off for a day in the
big woods alone. There was a vague “feel” of coming change in the air;
later I noticed that deer or birds were foretelling a storm; but the
sun rose on as sweet a tracking morning as heart could wish.
On the day before this hunt I had been fishing through the ice; and
the first leg of my present course took me northward along my incoming
snowshoe trail as far as a certain lake, halfway to my fishing ground.
From the lake I would follow a wolf runway till I came near the ridge
where, as I judged, the loup-garou had been howling. I was resolved
to pay no heed to any other trail than his; but hardly had I entered
the woods when I noticed the fresh track of a wolf beside my own of
yesterday. “Too small for the loup-garou,” I said at a glance; “but
what is he doing here, so near my camp?”
Only the trail could answer that question; but all the trail said was
that a young wolf had cat-footed through the woods till he came within
sight of my camp, half buried in snow. There he stood behind a bush,
evidently watching, and then loped away to the northwest.
Here was a pretty puzzle at the outset. A wolf does not approach a
camp of men unless he has an extraordinary reason; I must find out
what caused a wary brute to change his lifelong habit. Among wolves,
as among other gregarious creatures, there are occasional hermits or
outcasts whose ways are not the ways of their kind; they are less wild,
more daring or more trustful than their fellows, and perhaps this cub
was one of them. Luckily he had come from northward, the direction in
which I was heading; I could run his back trail and pick up information
without losing precious time.
My first discovery, a surprising one, was that the wolf had been
following me when I came home after dark, dragging a moose sled on
which were a catch of trout, a coat, a bundle of tilts, and a duffle
bag of such odds and ends as fishermen carry, all snugly lashed
because of the rough going. My first notion, that the hungry brute was
attracted by the trout, was promptly discarded. A timber wolf might eat
a fish that he found on the shore; but nothing could induce him to go
near food that lay amid human belongings. A second notion, that the cub
was following me with ferocious intent, was more nearly preposterous.
Not even when running in a hungry pack will these northern wolves
approach a man; on the contrary, they avoid him so carefully that he
is lucky to catch a fleeting glimpse of them. Occasionally, when a
wolf finds you in the woods at dusk, he may follow at a distance to
learn who you are or what you are doing. He is like a farm dog in that
he must have a look at every stranger who crosses his range; but he
differs from the dog in that he gives no challenge, and is very quiet
in his investigations. It was this last motive of curiosity, I thought,
which had brought the wolf sniffing along the trail behind me.
The story became more fascinating as I unrolled it from the snow. For
miles the cub had followed me closely, rarely coming into the trail,
where I might have seen him had I turned, but keeping to one side in
thick cover. When I entered camp he had hidden and watched till the
smoky smells or terrifying sounds of a hungry man getting supper sent
him off on the jump. Instead of retracing his course, he had headed
away to the northwest, probably to rejoin his pack at a distance from
where he left it.
As I ran his trail across the first lake, another little comedy came
to light. The first intimation I had of it was when I saw that the cub
had been digging under a bank, and went over and found--But let me tell
the tale as it happened to the wolf, not as I learned it from the snow,
where the end puzzled me before I had seen the beginning.
On the farther side of the lake, where yesterday I came out on the ice
at nightfall, my old moose sled had threatened to go to pieces, and I
had stopped to tinker it for the last stage of the journey. It was dark
when I made an end of the lashing; as I went forward once more, a bit
of rope that I had not used lay unnoticed beside the trail. From the
nearby woods the wolf had watched me at my work, keeping hidden till I
was well across the lake. Then he ventured shyly into the open, and the
first thing he ran against was this queer piece of rope.
Here was a new thing, a rare thing, a thing no wolf had ever before
seen; and the cub must find out about it. He studied it gingerly,
thrusting out his nose, circling to the other side, till he nerved
himself to give it a pull. The end squirmed like a snake, making him
hop away; but in a moment he came creeping back. This time he gave the
rope a shake, and a free end whipped over his head or flicked an ear,
to judge by the tremendous side jump he took to escape the thing. With
a sudden access of courage he pounced on his find, tussled it, whirled
it up in the air, scampered hither and yon like a playing kitten.
Remembering suddenly what he was following, he started after me; but
after a dozen steps he went back, and came trotting along the trail
with the rope in his mouth. All the way across the lake he played with
it at intervals, dropping it whenever some rumor of me came to his
nose or ears, but always going back to fetch it again. When I entered
the woods he ran quickly to one side and buried his plaything, and
then followed me to camp, growing more wary till the wood-splitting,
door-slamming, pan-rattling sound of a hasty supper frightened him away.
[Illustration: “_With a sudden access of courage he pounced on his
find, whirled it up in the air, scampered hither and yon like a playing
kitten._”]
Still back-tracking the cub into the woods beyond the lake, I found
where a pack of eight or ten wolves had crossed my snowshoe trail the
evening before. They approached it warily, for either they had seen
me or else I had just passed, leaving every track reeking with the man
scent. Every wolf had put his nose to my footing before leaping over
it. While the pack swept on for the night’s hunting, a single wolf
turned to follow me, and probably had me in sight all the way to camp,
keeping himself hidden in the dusk of the winter woods.
There were some big wolves in this pack, two especially; but none
left a track large enough for the loup-garou. My imagination, having
drawn that fellow on a grand scale, was hard to satisfy. He had howled
farther to the north and east, I judged; yet there was better chance
to find him with the pack at this hour than to pick up his trail by
casting about the vast forest. On that chance I followed the pack,
only to meet with endless difficulty. The wolves were hunting keenly,
scattering in such devious fashion that I abandoned their trail with
the thought that I would find them by aid of the inquisitive cub. After
leaving me, you remember, he had headed away to the northwest; as I was
now well north of camp, I need go only a few miles westward in order to
cross his trail.
Should you be interested enough in woodcraft to ask a reason for this
departure, the answer is that I wanted to get quickly to where the
wolves had killed and eaten; after which it would be easier to follow
them, since they grow lazy after feeding, and travel by runways instead
of sweeping the whole country. It might take hours of hard trailing to
find their kill; but the cub-wolf would go to it like a homing bee the
moment he felt hungry. And that suggests another curious bit of animal
lore (one which may be questioned, but of which I had myself no doubt),
that a lone wolf always knows where his pack is feeding or resting.
They may be asleep in their day bed far away, after roving uncounted
miles since he left them; yet by some instinct or extra sense he seems
able to go straight to them at any hour of the day or night.
Holding across the wild country, therefore, within the hour I had
picked up the forward trail of my cub-wolf. As I expected, he had
followed a direct course till his trail joined that of the pack,
some four or five miles from my camp. Here I made two heartening
discoveries: the first, that the wolves had fed and were now roaming
with slow feet and heavy stomachs; the second, that they had been
joined by a huge wolf that was not with them when they crossed my
snowshoe trail. “The loup-garou, and a monster!” I thought exultingly
as I measured his tracks, the largest I have ever found. Folding my
fingers flat at the second joint, I could drop my gloved hand into
the print of his forefoot; where snow was soft he sank deep as a buck
at every step. Best of all, he had fed, he was logy, he must soon grow
sleepy; and, O day of good luck! I had yet six hours of sunlight.
Before dark I would run into that pack, and then-- The revolver
butt snuggled into my hand to say that we would then know whether
the loup-garou had any medicine to compare with a long-barreled,
target-sighted, velvet-triggered forty-four.
There was no call to hurry; the longer the wolves slept, the more
secure they would feel; so to satisfy my curiosity, and prove or
disprove my notion of wolf habits, I decided to follow my cub awhile
more. Instead of running with the pack, he had taken their back trail;
which told me that he expected to find food.
On the ice of a little pond I found a buck stretched out. The trail
said that the wolves jumped him on the ridge above, caught him after a
short run, ate what they wanted, and left the rest to the foxes. Here
was abundance of good meat, enough to satisfy this pack for a week or
two; yet to-night or to-morrow night, preferring warm flesh to cold,
they would chivvy another deer. My gorge rose at the thought; for
though a hungry beast must live, one must take sides with wolf or deer
in the wilderness, as he must choose between cats and birds in his home
orchard. If any excuse were needed for the joy of hunting, it seemed
a desirable thing, like poetic justice, to lay this buck and the wolf
that killed him side by side when the day was done.
From the pond I swung away rapidly after the pack, expecting to be near
enough for a stalk within an hour or two; but had a man been hunting
merely for heads or skins, the trail would have spelled hope, vexation
and heartbreak in quick succession. For a time the wolves roamed
lazily, but not aimlessly. They had in mind a day bed near the scene
of the next hunting (wolves do not harry the same ground two nights in
succession), and though they were constantly making detours, following
an easy runway between hills or seeking a safe crossing of swift water,
they held a westward direction as true as a compass. I was glad of that
course, because it might bring me near a chain of lakes where I had a
snowshoe trail, one that I could follow homeward after dark if need
be. To the south also the lay of the land was familiar; but northward
stretched a wild country which I had never entered.
The trail of a wolf pack is never a dull trail, and at first I gave
myself up to full enjoyment of it, here puzzling over a record that I
could not understand, there finding another so typical that at times
I seemed to be trailing a band of roving dogs. Wolves do not blunder
through a region; they are alive and inquisitive every moment, the
youngsters especially. In this pack the loup-garou and a big female
held together (it was the end of winter, near the mating season),
while the cubs and yearlings were continually going off on side tours
of investigation. To follow these excursions, learning what pleased
or puzzled the intelligent brutes, was part of the fun of trailing;
yes, and a better part than pushing blindly ahead, intent on a shot or
a killing. I must give the wolves this credit, too, that though they
crossed the deep paths of a deer yard, they made no attempt to harry
the game. They rarely do so unless they are hungry, or unless (near
settlements) they run into a herd of foolish domestic animals that do
not know enough to scatter or be quiet when wolves appear.
So the pleasant trail ran on through the big woods, wonderfully
white and still, and suddenly headed for a sheltered spot on a ridge
overlooking a wide stretch of country. My heart jumped when I saw that
spot, and the trail turning to its cover. It was an ideal place for
wolves to “lie up” for the day; after testing the air, I approached the
nest from leeward as stealthily as a hunting fox. It was empty; worse
than that, it had not been occupied even for a moment’s halt. No sooner
did the wolves enter the perfect cover than all the imps of uneasiness
flew to their backs and drove them on. The trail was cold, showing no
sign of alarm; but it said that the pack had shaken off laziness and
was going somewhere without delay.
No more easy trailing now, and no more side excursions to learn
what the cubs had been doing. The wolves headed into rough country
northward; for miles I followed them where never a man went before,
I think, and where no sensible man would go again. Only once have I
experienced anything to compare with it and that was when I followed a
bear that was making for his winter den through a foot of new-fallen
snow. The bear had seen me, and took to rough country, knowing that I
was hot on his trail; but all these cold signs said that the wolves
were making medicine here while I was making coffee far away. In some
uncanny way they seemed to have received a “tip” that they would be
followed on this one day of all the year, and had laid out a trail that
must break an enemy’s wind or heart. “Oh, that’s the loup-garou, all
right,” I thought; “and some cunning devil is surely his master, as old
books say. What else would lead this gorged pack to forsake its way of
easy traveling and go through a breakneck country like this?”
For hours the trail held to broken ground, telling its lively tale.
When the wolves drew near a steep hill or a stiff cobble, instead of
rounding it by an easy runway they would corkscrew up one side and
tumble down the other. In one place they would climb a sharp pitch like
goats; in another, with discouraging ease, they would crouch under a
ledge and take it with a catlike spring. When they topped ridge or
hill, the leader would pick out a smooth pitch, sit on his tail, and
slide down the other side, leaving a chute in the snow which might be
ten or thirty feet long, and steep as a church roof. Here a few of the
wolves might select individual slides; as a rule, they sat on their
tails and tobogganed down after the leader.
To follow them in such places (warily, because the pack might be
jumped at any moment) you had to rise on tiptoe, driving moccasins
down through toe-holes in the snowshoe webs for a grip on the slippery
incline, and make use of every bush or root to give yourself a helpful
upward pull. When you reached the top and made cautious survey, you
had to take off snowshoes and slide or scramble down the wolf chute.
Meanwhile the thermometer was near zero, and you wished it were
lower, for a little of this kind of work left you hot as a haymaker.
Your wind-proof coat was tied in a snug bundle at your back; you were
gloveless, in shirt-sleeves, and still too warmly dressed. When you
stopped to breathe after a tough climb, the keen air promptly chilled
you to the bone.
What between laborious ups and breathless downs, the afternoon passed
all too quickly away; the last precious hour of daylight struck, and
still there was no sign to indicate how far ahead the wolves might be
resting. The trail was still cold, calling for haste if one expected to
run into the pack; yet calling also for alertness, since the next step
might bring one into sense range of the keenest of wild animals. A wolf
may sleep, but never his ears or his nose; that is the fascination of
trailing him to his day bed.
I was resting on the crest of a ridge, the trail stretching northward
along the summit, when a gloom swept over the woods, as if they had
been brushed by a cloud. Then a breeze stirred, making moan in the
evergreens, and a snowstorm came creeping up from the south. In a
moment my good luck was changed; the wind had turned behind me while
the game was still ahead, and one might as well climb after a squirrel
as to stalk a wolf pack from windward.
“No use! this loup-garou is too much for you,” I told myself, almost
ready to acknowledge his superior medicine or magic. Ordinarily I might
have been homeward bound with a wolf skin on my back at this hour; but
now, empty handed, I must find a sheltered spot, build a “Commoosie”
and gather wood for a night’s fire. Somewhere to the westward was a
snowshoe trail; but a storm was coming, the country was strange, and
to find the trail or retrace my course before dark was out of the
question. Yes, I must spend the night here; but first, as a man waits
another hopeful minute after a poor day’s fishing, I would run the
trail a little farther.
That was a fortunate last-minute decision. I had followed the ridge
only a few steps when I saw the face of a pond far below on my left,
and recognized it as one I had crossed when a wolf pack led me a long
chase hither from a different direction. No cheerless night for me now,
and no more climbing every heartbreak hill between here and camp! The
trail had borne more to the westward than I thought; the pond below was
near a chain of lakes, and from it I could quickly reach my snowshoe
trail and easy traveling.
The wooded ridge on which I stood had a sharp drop of twenty yards
toward the pond. Along the foot of this drop grew clumps of bushes
(of the dwarf-laurel family, I think), bearing shiny green leaves
that appeared very beautiful when all other leaves were dead under the
snow; and below that was an immense hillside stretching down to the
valley. The wolves had slid down the first pitch, and turned sharp to
the north again, still keeping to the heights, seeking even rougher
country before calling halt for the day. So I judged, my eyes following
the tireless trail, which went weaving in and out of the laurel bushes.
That thicket yonder was a good wolf nest, excellent; but so were twenty
others I had found empty that day; and see, a trail going out on the
farther side!
As I stole along the summit, scanning the cover below in lingering
hope, a snowflake touched my cheek with unmistakable warning. Others
came whirling among the trees, like little white birds seeking a place
to light; the great valley at my feet began to fill and darken. “No
time to lose,” I thought; “not a minute, if I am to reach camp before
this storm gets too thick to see through it. So, till next time,
loup-garou! You have given me a great hunt; but I wish I could have
seen your eyes.” Then I took off my snowshoes, picked a smooth pitch
with a snowdrift below, and went down like a shot.
That was a short slide, hardly more than a second; but it was crammed
full of surprises and wild emotions. Before it fairly started I had a
startling glimpse of something big and gray popping above the laurels,
like a jack-in-a-box. Another and another gray thing flew up and down.
As each topped the cover I had instantaneous picture of a convulsed
body with dangling legs, above which gleaming white fangs and fierce
eyes were turned in my direction. Every wolf in the pack must have
leaped straight up from his sleep, so as to look clear of the bushes
and see what was coming. When I struck the drift with the rumble of
a small avalanche, the landscape was full of wolves, some jumping up
wildly to see, others streaking away through the woods like scared cats.
Out of the corner of an eye I saw these vanishing shapes, my whole
heart and attention being fastened on one enormous wolf that jumped
from under me and went whisking down the slope in astonishing-high
bounds, as if he rode a witch’s broomstick. It was the loup-garou, the
terrible, the enchanted beast! I could have laughed or yelled at his
flight had I not wanted to bemoan my own blunder. After throwing me off
his trail he had gone to sleep in the laurels under the ridge, where
he was sure no enemy could approach unnoticed; and after trailing him
uncounted miles with endless caution, I had tumbled down like a sack
almost on top of him. It was such an ending as makes one a believer in
luck, especially bad luck.
And speaking of luck, it was, after all, fairly distributed, with such
waggish humor that no reasonable creature had any cause to grumble.
The lucky thing for me was the panic that gets into a wild beast’s
legs whenever a startling thing happens. I knew the power of a timber
wolf, that he can throw a buck by a twist of the head, and paralyze
him or open his throat by a snap of the terrible fangs; and I had
roused a dozen such brutes, every one within springing distance. Had
they whirled on me in the drift, my sky would have been no bigger than
my hat; I would have had no more fighting chance than a rabbit. Yet
they lost nerve and scattered like flushed quail when a snowball came
blundering down into their day bed.
In the other scale of fortune’s balance, it was lucky for the wolves
that I was as much surprised and generally stood-on-my-head as they
were. After an all-day chase, here was one rewardful moment when a man
needed just three things: solid footing, clear eyes, a steady hand. In
that moment I was sprawling like an upset turtle, one hand brushing
snow out of my face, the other tugging at a revolver, which took that
particular occasion to jam in the holster. Somehow, with loss of the
only precious second, I was on my feet to send one hasty shot at the
loup-garou, flying off on his broomstick with trees flitting past him
in dizzy procession, and another at a big dog wolf that, confused by
the roaring echo, turned and came streaking past me up the ridge.
It was all over before there was time to pick a target or even to
think. The dog wolf jumped high at the shot, showing he had no magic;
but as I gazed ruefully after the loup-garou I had a last glimpse of
his plume waving _au revoir_ as he sailed over a windfall. Whatever
loup-garouishness that fellow ever had is still with him.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
FROM A BEAVER LODGE