Strange neighbors these, the grim, savage mother wolf of the

NORTHERN TRAILS

BOOK I

By

William J. Long

_WOOD FOLK SERIES BOOK VI_

1905

PREFACE

In the original preface to "Northern Trails" the author stated that,

with the solitary exception of the salmon's life in the sea after he

vanishes from human sight, every incident recorded here is founded

squarely upon personal and accurate observation of animal life and

habits. I now repeat and emphasize that statement. Even when the

observations are, for the reader's sake, put into the form of a

connected story, there is not one trait or habit mentioned which is not

true to animal life.

Such a statement ought to be enough, especially as I have repeatedly

furnished evidence from reliable eye-witnesses to support every

observation that the critics have challenged; but of late a strenuous

public attack has been made upon the wolf story in this volume by two

men claiming to speak with authority. They take radical exception to my

record of a big white wolf killing a young caribou by snapping at the

chest and heart. They declared this method of killing to be "a

mathematical impossibility" and, by inference, a gross falsehood,

utterly ruinous to true ideas of wolves and of natural history.

As no facts or proofs are given to support this charge, the first thing

which a sensible man naturally does is to examine the fitness of the

critics, in order to ascertain upon what knowledge or experience they

base their dogmatic statements. One of these critics is a man who has no

personal knowledge of wolves or caribou, who asserts that the animal has

no possibility of reason or intelligence, and who has for years publicly

denied the observations of other men which tend to disprove his ancient

theory. It seems hardly worth while to argue about either wolves or men

with such a naturalist, or to point out that Descartes' idea of animals,

as purely mechanical or automatic creatures, has long since been laid

aside and was never considered seriously by any man who had lived close

to either wild or domestic animals. The second critic's knowledge of

wolves consists almost entirely of what he has happened to see when

chasing the creatures with dogs and hunters. Judging by his own nature

books, with their barbaric records of slaughter, his experience of wild

animals was gained while killing them. Such a man will undoubtedly

discover some things about animals, how they fight and hide and escape

their human enemies; but it hardly needs any argument to show that the

man who goes into the woods with dogs and rifles and the desire to kill

can never understand any living animal.

If you examine now any of the little books which he condemns, you will

find a totally different story: no record of chasing and killing, but

only of patient watching, of creeping near to wild animals and winning

their confidence whenever it is possible, of following them day and

night with no motive but the pure love of the thing and no object but to

see exactly what each animal is doing and to understand, so far as a man

can, the mystery of its dumb life.

Naturally a man in this attitude will see many traits of animal life

which are hidden from the game-killer as well as from the scientific

collector of skins. For instance, practically all wild animals are shy

and timid and run away at man's approach. This is the general experience

not only of hunters but of casual observers in the woods. Yet my own

experience has many times shown me exactly the opposite trait: that when

these same shy animals find me unexpectedly close at hand, more than

half the time they show no fear whatever but only an eager curiosity to

know who and what the creature is that sits so quietly near them.

Sometimes, indeed, they seem almost to understand the mental attitude

which has no thought of harm but only of sympathy and friendly interest.

Once I was followed for hours by a young wolf which acted precisely like

a lost dog, too timid to approach and too curious or lonely to run away.

He even wagged his tail when I called to him softly. Had I shot him on

sight, I would probably have foolishly believed that he intended to

attack me when he came trotting along my trail. Three separate times I

have touched a wild deer with my hand; once I touched a moose, once an

eagle, once a bear; and a score of times at least I have had to frighten

these big animals or get out of their way, when their curiosity brought

them too near for perfect comfort.

So much for the personal element, for the general attitude and fitness

of the observer and his critics. But the question is not chiefly a

personal one; it is simply a matter of truth and observation, and the

only honest or scientific method is, first, to go straight to nature and

find out the facts; and then--lest your own eyesight or judgment be at

fault--to consult other observers to find if, perchance, they also have

seen the facts exemplified. This is not so easy as to dogmatize or to

write animal stories; but it is the only safe method, and one which the

nature writer as well as the scientist must follow if his work is to

endure.

Following this good method, when the critics had proclaimed that my

record of a big wolf killing a young caribou by biting into the chest

and heart was an impossibility, I went straight to the big woods and, as

soon as the law allowed, secured photographs and exact measurements of

the first full-grown deer that crossed my trail. These photographs and

measurements show beyond any possibility of honest doubt the following

facts: (1) The lower chest of a deer, between and just behind the

forelegs, is thin and wedge-shaped, exactly as I stated, and the point

of the heart is well down in this narrow wedge. The distance through the

chest and point of the heart from side to side was, in this case,

exactly four and one-half inches. A man's hand, as shown in the

photograph, can easily grasp the whole lower chest of a deer, placing

thumb and forefinger over the heart on opposite sides. (2) The heart of

a deer, and indeed of all ruminant animals, lies close against the chest

walls and is easily reached and wounded. The chest cartilage, except in

an old deer, is soft; the ribs are thin and easily crushed, and the

spaces between the ribs are wide enough to admit a man's finger, to say

nothing of a wolf's fang. In this case the point of the heart, as the

deer lay on his side, was barely five eights of an inch from the

surface. (3) Any dog or wolf, therefore, having a spread of jaws of four

and one-half inches, and fangs three quarters of an inch long, could

easily grasp the chest of this deer from beneath and reach the heart

from either side. As the jaws of the big northern wolf spread from six

to eight inches and his fangs are over an inch long, to kill a deer in

this way would require but a slight effort. The chest of a caribou is

anatomically exactly like that of other deer; only the caribou fawn and

yearling of "Northern Trails" have smaller chests than the animals I

measured.

So much for the facts and the possibilities. As for specific instances,

years ago I found a deer just killed in the snow and beside him the

fresh tracks of a big wolf, which had probably been frightened away at

my approach. The deer was bitten just behind and beneath the left

shoulder, and one long fang had entered the heart. There was not another

scratch on the body, so far as I could discover. I thought this very

exceptional at the time; but years afterwards my Indian guide in the

interior of Newfoundland assured me that it was a common habit of

killing caribou among the big white wolves with which he was familiar.

To show that the peculiar habit is not confined to any one section, I

quote here from the sworn statements of three other eyewitnesses. The

first is superintendent of the Algonquin National Park, a man who has

spent a lifetime in the North Woods and who has at present an excellent

opportunity for observing wild-animal habits; the second is an educated

Sioux Indian; the third is a geologist and mining engineer, now

practicing his profession in Philadelphia.

ALGONQUIN PARK, ONTARIO, August 31, 1907.

This certifies that during the past thirty years spent in our Canadian

wilds, I have seen several animals killed by our large timber wolves. In

the winter of 1903 I saw two deer thus killed on Smoke Lake, Nipissing,

Ontario. One deer was bitten through the front chest, the other just

behind the foreleg. In each case there was no other wound on the body.

[Signed] G.W. BARTLETT, _Superintendent_.

I certify that I lived for twenty years in northern Nebraska and Dakota,

in a region where timber wolves were abundant.... I saw one horse that

had just been killed by a wolf. The front of his chest was torn open to

the heart. There was no other wound on the body. I once watched a wolf

kill a stray horse on the open prairie. He kept nipping at the hind

legs, making the horse turn rapidly till he grew dizzy and fell down.

Then the wolf snapped or bit into his chest.... The horse died in a few

moments.

[Signed] STEPHEN JONES (HEPIDAN).

I certify that in November, 1900, while surveying in Wyoming, my party

saw two wolves chase a two-year-old colt over a cliff some fifteen or

sixteen feet high. I was on the spot with two others immediately after

the incident occurred. The only injuries to the colt, aside from a

broken leg, were deep lacerations made by wolf fangs in the chest behind

the foreshoulder. In addition to this personal observation I have

frequently heard from hunters, herders, and cowboys that big wolves

frequently kill deer and other animals by snapping at the chest.

[Signed] F.S. PUSEY.

I have more evidence of the same kind from the region which I described

in "Northern Trails"; but I give these three simply to show that what

one man discovers as a surprising trait of some individual wolf or deer

may be common enough when we open our eyes to see. The fact that wolves

do not always or often kill in this way has nothing to do with the

question. I know one small region where old wolves generally hunt in

pairs and, so far as I can discover, one wolf always trips or throws the

game, while the other invariably does the killing at the throat. In

another region, including a part of Algonquin Park, in Ontario, I have

the records of several deer killed by wolves in a single winter; and in

every case the wolf slipped up behind his game and cut the femoral

artery, or the inner side of the hind leg, and then drew back quietly,

allowing the deer to bleed to death.

The point is, that because a thing is unusual or interesting it is not

necessarily false, as my dogmatic critics would have you believe. I have

studied animals, not as species but as individuals, and have recorded

some things which other and better naturalists have overlooked; but I

have sought for facts, first of all, as zealously as any biologist, and

have recorded only what I have every reason to believe is true. That

these facts are unusual means simply that we have at last found natural

history to be interesting, just as the discovery of unusual men and

incidents gives charm and meaning to the records of our humanity. There

may be honest errors or mistakes in these books--and no one tries half

so hard as the author to find and correct them--but meanwhile the fact

remains that, though six volumes of the Wood Folk books have already

been published, only three slight errors have thus far been pointed out,

and these were promptly and gratefully acknowledged.

The simple truth is that these observations of mine, though they are all

true, do not tell more than a small fraction of the interesting things

that wild animals do continually in their native state, when they are

not frightened by dogs and hunters, or when we are not blinded by our

preconceived notions in watching them. I have no doubt that romancing is

rife just now on the part of men who study animals in a library; but

personally, with my note-books full of incidents which I have never yet

recorded, I find the truth more interesting, and I cannot understand why

a man should deliberately choose romance when he can have the greater

joy of going into the wilderness to see with his own eyes and to

understand with his own heart just how the animals live. One thing seems

to me to be more and more certain: that we are only just beginning to

understand wild animals, and it is chiefly our own barbarism, our lust

of killing, our stupid stuffed specimens, and especially our prejudices

which stand in the way of greater knowledge. Meanwhile the critic who

asserts dogmatically what a wild animal will or will not do under

certain conditions only proves how carelessly he has watched them and

how little he has learned of Nature's infinite variety.

WILLIAM J. LONG

STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

CONTENTS

WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE

THE OLD WOLF'S CHALLENGE

WHERE THE TRAIL BEGINS

NOEL AND MOOKA

THE WAY OF THE WOLF

THE WHITE WOLF'S HUNTING

TRAILS THAT CROSS IN THE SNOW

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

"A QUICK SNAP WHERE THE HEART LAY"

"THE TERRIBLE HOWL OF A GREAT WHITE WOLF"

"WATCHING HER GROWING YOUNGSTERS"

"AS THE MOTHER'S LONG JAWS CLOSED OVER THE SMALL OF THE BACK"

"THE SILENT, APPALLING DEATH-WATCH BEGAN"

WAYEESES THE STRONG ONE

_The Old Wolf's Challenge_

We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped

down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the

mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black

rocks and the reefs bared their teeth on either side, like the long jaws

of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed.

In our flight we had picked up a fisherman--snatched him out of his

helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him

aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet--and it was

he who now stood at the wheel of our little schooner and took her

careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate,

rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the _Wild Duck_ swung to

her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and

clanking her chains as if eager to be out again in the turmoil. At

sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and

clear over the dark mountains.

Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the

foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, every man glad in his

heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the

desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness

brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black

rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered

the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver in the

moonlight; far away, like a vague shadow, a handful of little gray

houses clung like barnacles to the base of a great bare hill whose foot

was in the sea and whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not a

light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from these little

houses, whose shells close daily at twilight over the life within, weary

with the day's work. Only the dogs were restless--those strange

creatures that shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in

another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out from ours by

impassable barriers.

For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry

brutes that drew the sledges in winter and that picked up a vagabond

living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's

flakes and pig-pens and by catching flounders in the sea as the tide

ebbed. Venture among them with fear in your heart and they would fly at

your legs and throat like wild beasts; but twirl a big stick jauntily,

or better still go quietly on your way without concern, and they would

skulk aside and watch you hungrily out of the corners of their surly

eyes, whose lids were red and bloodshot as a mastiff's. When the moon

rose I noticed them flitting about like witches on the lonely shore,

miles away from the hamlet; now sitting on their tails in a solemn

circle; now howling all together as if demented, and anon listening

intently in the vast silence, as if they heard or smelled or perhaps

just felt the presence of some unknown thing that was hidden from human

senses. And when I paddled ashore to watch them one ran swiftly past

without heeding me, his nose outstretched, his eyes green as foxfire in

the moonlight, while the others vanished like shadows among the black

rocks, each intent on his unknown quest.

That is why I had come up from my warm bunk at midnight to sit alone on

the taffrail, listening in the keen air to the howling that made me

shiver, spite of myself, and watching in the vague moonlight to

understand if possible what the brutes felt amid the primal silence and

desolation.

A long interval of profound stillness had passed, and I could just make

out the circle of dogs sitting on their tails on the open shore, when

suddenly, faint and far away, an unearthly howl came rolling down the

mountains, _ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ a long wailing crescendo beginning

softly, like a sound in a dream, and swelling into a roar that waked the

sleeping echoes and set them jumping like startled goats from crag to

crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking out into

indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony to

certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping

within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased

abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks. From

far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the

cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep. Then

silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a

winding-sheet.

As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept

undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the

foremast. As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the

night he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching

alone. "Das Wayeeses. I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh, long,

long while ago," he whispered. And taking my marine glasses he stood

beside me watching intently.

[Illustration: "The terrible howl of the great white wolf"]

There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled as

they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we turned

our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for the

challenge. Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught something

moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain. A shadow with the slinking

trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the moon. Just in

front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a pointed nose up

to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight,

and--_ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ the terrible howl of a great white wolf

tumbled down on the husky dogs and set them howling as if possessed. No

doubt now of their queer actions which had puzzled me for hours past.

The wild wolf had called and the tame wolves waked to answer. Before my

dull ears had heard a rumor of it they were crazy with the excitement.

Now every chord in their wild hearts was twanging its thrilling answer

to the leader's summons, and my own heart awoke and thrilled as it never

did before to the call of a wild beast.

For an hour or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate

mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be

free again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs,

which refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from

overmastering temptation. Then the shadow vanished from the big rock on

the mountain, the huskies fled away wildly from the shore, and only the

sob of the breakers broke the stillness.

That was my first (and Noel's last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the

huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea to

study. All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed him,

guided sometimes by a rumor--a hunter's story or a postman's fright,

caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with his dogs

through the long winter night--and again by a track on the shore of some

lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou flying wildly

from some unseen danger. Here is the white wolf's story, learned partly

from much watching and following his tracks alone, but more from Noel

the Indian hunter, in endless tramps over the hills and caribou marshes

and in long quiet talks in the firelight beside the salmon rivers.

_Where the Trail Begins_

From a cave in the rocks, on the unnamed mountains that tower over

Harbor Weal on the north and east, a huge mother wolf appeared,

stealthily, as all wolves come out of their dens. A pair of green eyes

glowed steadily like coals deep within the dark entrance; a massive gray

head rested unseen against the lichens of a gray rock; then the whole

gaunt body glided like a passing cloud shadow into the June sunshine and

was lost in a cleft of the rocks.

There, in the deep shadow where no eye might notice the movement, the

old wolf shook off the delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all

her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the

toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders

till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out

straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little

jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and

showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs

that could reach a deer's heart in a single snap. Then she leaped upon a

great rock and sat up straight, with her bushy tail curled close about

her fore paws, a savage, powerful, noble-looking beast, peering down

gravely over the green mountains to the shining sea.

A moment before the hillside had appeared utterly lifeless, so still and

rugged and desolate that one must notice and welcome the stir of a mouse

or ground squirrel in the moss, speaking of life that is glad and free

and vigorous even in the deepest solitudes; yet now, so quietly did the

old wolf appear, so perfectly did her rough gray coat blend with the

rough gray rocks, that the hillside seemed just as tenantless as before.

A stray wind seemed to move the mosses, that was all. Only where the

mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw every

moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats

far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every

chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was

holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For

the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world,

and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking infinite

precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid.

A faint breeze from the west strayed over the mountains and instantly

the old wolf turned her sensitive nose to question it. There on her

right, and just across a deep ravine where a torrent went leaping down

to the sea in hundred-foot jumps, a great stag caribou was standing,

still as a stone, on a lofty pinnacle, looking down over the marvelous

panorama spread wide beneath his feet. Every day Megaleep came there to

look, and the old wolf in her daily hunts often crossed the deep path

which he had worn through the moss from the wide table-lands over the

ridge to this sightly place where he could look down curiously at the

comings and goings of men on the sea. But at this season when small game

was abundant--and indeed at all seasons when not hunger-driven--the wolf

was peaceable and the caribou were not molested. Indeed the big stag

knew well where the old wolf denned. Every east wind brought her message

to his nostrils; but secure in his own strength and in the general peace

which prevails in the summer-time among all large animals of the north,

he came daily to look down on the harbor and wag his ears at the

fishing-boats, which he could never understand.

Strange neighbors these, the grim, savage mother wolf of the mountains,

hiding her young in dens of the rocks, and the wary, magnificent

wanderer of the broad caribou barrens; but they understood each other,

and neither wolf nor caribou had any fear or hostile intent one for the

other. And this is not strange at all, as might be supposed by those who

think animals are governed by fear on one hand and savage cruelty on the

other, but is one of the commonest things to be found by those who

follow faithfully the northern trails.

Wayeeses had chosen her den well, on the edge of the untrodden

solitudes--sixty miles as the crow flies--that stretch northward from

Harbor Weal to Harbor Woe. It was just under the ridge, in a sunny

hollow among the rocks, on the southern slope of the great mountains.

The earliest sunshine found the place and warmed it, bringing forth the

bluebells for a carpet, while in every dark hollow the snow lingered all

summer long, making dazzling white patches on the mountain; and under

the high waterfalls, that looked from the harbor like bits of silver

ribbon stretched over the green woods, the ice clung to the rocks in

fantastic knobs and gargoyles, making cold, deep pools for the trout to

play in. So it was both cool and warm there, and whatever the weather

the gaunt old mother wolf could always find just the right spot to sleep

away the afternoon. Best of all it was perfectly safe; for though from

the door of her den she could look down on the old Indian's cabin, like

a pebble on the shore, so steep were the billowing hills and so

impassable the ravines that no human foot ever trod the place, not even

in autumn when the fishermen left their boats at anchor in Harbor Weal

and camped inland on the paths of the big caribou herds.

Whether or not the father wolf ever knew where his cubs were hidden only

he himself could tell. He was an enormous brute, powerful and cunning

beyond measure, that haunted the lonely thickets and ponds bordering the

great caribou barrens over the ridge, and that kept a silent watch,

within howling distance, over the den which he never saw. Sometimes the

mother wolf met him on her wanderings and they hunted together. Often he

brought the game he had caught, a fox or a young goose; and sometimes

when she had hunted in vain he met her, as if he had understood her need

from a distance, and led her to where he had buried two or three of the

rabbits that swarmed in the thickets. But spite of the attention and the

indifferent watch which he kept, he never ventured near the den, which

he could have found easily enough by following the mother's track. The

old she-wolf would have flown at his throat like a fury had he showed

his head over the top of the ridge.

The reason for this was simple enough to the savage old mother, though

there are some things about it that men do not yet understand. Wolves,

like cats and foxes, and indeed like most wild male animals, have an

atrocious way of killing their own young when they find them

unprotected; so the mother animal searches out a den by herself and

rarely allows the male to come near it. Spite of this beastly habit it

must be said honestly of the old he-wolf that he shows a marvelous

gentleness towards his mate. He runs at the slightest show of teeth from

a mother wolf half his size, and will stand meekly a snap of the jaws or

a cruel gash of the terrible fangs in his flank without defending

himself. Even our hounds seem to have inherited something of this

primitive wolf trait, for there are seasons when, unless urged on by

men, they will not trouble a mother wolf or fox. Many times, in the

early spring, when foxes are mating, and again later when they are heavy

with young and incapable of a hard run, I have caught my hounds trotting

meekly after a mother fox, sniffing her trail indifferently and sitting

down with heads turned aside when she stops for a moment to watch and

yap at them disdainfully. And when you call them they come shamefaced;

though in winter-time, when running the same fox to death, they pay no

more heed to your call than to the crows clamoring over them. But we

must return to Wayeeses, sitting over her den on a great gray rock,

trying every breeze, searching every movement, harking to every chirp

and rustle before bringing her cubs out into the world.

Satisfied at last with her silent investigation she turned her head

towards the den. There was no sound, only one of those silent, unknown

communications that pass between animals. Instantly there was a

scratching, scurrying, whining, and three cubs tumbled out of the dark

hole in the rocks, with fuzzy yellow fur and bright eyes and sharp ears

and noses, like collies, all blinking and wondering and suddenly silent

at the big bright world which they had never seen before, so different

from the dark den under the rocks.

Indeed it was a marvelous world that the little cubs looked upon when

they came out to blink and wonder in the June sunshine. Contrasts

everywhere, that made the world seem too big for one little glance to

comprehend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and quivered on

the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud shadows rested for hours, as if

asleep, or swept over the mountain side in an endless game of

fox-and-geese with the sunbeams. Here the birds trilled, the bees hummed

in the bluebells, the brook roared and sang on its way to the sea; while

over all the harmony of the world brooded a silence too great to be

disturbed. Sunlight and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines and

dazzling mountain tops, mayflowers and singing birds and rustling winds

filled all the earth with color and movement and melody. From under

their very feet great masses of rock, tossed and tumbled as by a giant's

play, stretched downwards to where the green woods began and rolled in

vast billows to the harbor, which shone and sparkled in the sun, yet

seemed no bigger than their mother's paw. Fishing-boats with shining

sails hovered over it, like dragon-flies, going and coming from the

little houses that sheltered together under the opposite mountain, like

a cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine stump. Most wonderful,

most interesting of all was the little gray hut on the shore, almost

under their feet, where little Noel and the Indian children played with

the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the fishermen

in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf cubs are like collies in this, that they

seem to have a natural interest, perhaps a natural kinship with man, and

next to their own kind nothing arouses their interest like a group of

children playing.

So the little cubs took their first glimpse of the big world, of

mountains and sea and sunshine, and children playing on the shore, and

the world was altogether too wonderful for little heads to comprehend.

Nevertheless one plain impression remained, the same that you see in the

ears and nose and stumbling feet and wagging tail of every puppy-dog you

meet on the streets, that this bright world is a famous place, just made

a-purpose for little ones to play in. Sitting on their tails in a solemn

row the wolf cubs bent their heads and pointed their noses gravely at

the sea. There it was, all silver and blue and boundless, with tiny

white sails dancing over it, winking and flashing like entangled bits of

sunshine; and since the eyes of a cub, like those of a little child,

cannot judge distances, one stretched a paw at the nearest sail, miles

away, to turn it over and make it go the other way. They turned up their

heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite,

with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one

stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to

pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near

them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday,

and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, the cubs took

to playing with the feather, chasing and worrying and tumbling over each

other, while the gaunt old mother wolf looked down from her rock and

watched and was satisfied.

_Noel and Mooka_

Down on the shore, that same bright June afternoon, little Noel and his

sister Mooka were going on wonderful sledge journeys, meeting wolves and

polar bears and caribou and all sorts of adventures, more wonderful by

far than any that ever came to imagination astride of a rocking-horse.

They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the

rest,--five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a

tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a

bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand,

waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside,

cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar! Hiya, Wolf! Hi, hiya,

hiya, yeeee!"--and then shrieking with laughter as the sledge overturned

and the crabs took to fighting and scratching in the tangled harness,

just like the husky dogs in winter. Mooka was trying to untangle them,

dancing about to keep her bare toes and fingers away from the nipping

claws, when she jumped up with a yell, the biggest crab hanging to the

end of her finger.

"Owee! oweeeee! Caesar bit me," she wailed. Then she stopped, with

finger in her mouth, while Caesar scrambled headlong into the tide; for

Noel was standing on the beach pointing at a brown sail far down in the

deep bay, where Southeast Brook came singing from the green wilderness.

"Ohé, Mooka! there's father and Old Tomah come back from salmon

fishing."

"Let's go meet um, little brother," said Mooka, her black eyes dancing;

and in a wink crabs and sledges were forgotten. The old punt was off in

a shake, the tattered sail up, skipper Noel lounging in the stern, like

an old salt, with the steering oar, while the crew, forgetting her

nipped finger, tugged valiantly at the main-sheet.

They were scooting away gloriously, rising and pounding the waves, when

Mooka, who did not have to steer and whose restless glance was roving

over every bay and hillside, jumped up, her eyes round as lynx's.

"Look, Noel, look! There's Megaleep again watching us." And Noel,

following her finger, saw far up on the mountain a stag caribou, small

and fine and clear as a cameo against the blue sky, where they had so

often noticed him with wonder watching them as they came shouting home

with the tide. Instantly Noel threw himself against the steering oar;

the punt came up floundering and shaking in the wind.

"Come on, little sister; we can go up Fox Brook. Tomah showed me trail."

And forgetting the salmon, as they had a moment before forgotten the

crabs and sledges, these two children of the wild, following every

breeze and bird call and blossoming bluebell and shining star alike,

tumbled ashore and went hurrying up the brook, splashing through the

shallows, darting like kingfishers over the points, and jumping like

wild goats from rock to rock. In an hour they were far up the mountain,

lying side by side on a great flat rock, looking across a deep

impassable valley and over two rounded hilltops, where the scrub spruces

looked like pins on a cushion, to the bare, rugged hillside where

Megaleep stood out like a watchman against the blue sky.

"Does he see us, little brother?" whispered Mooka, quivering with

excitement and panting from the rapid climb.

"See us? sartin, little sister; but that only make him want peek um some

more," said the little hunter. And raised carelessly on his elbows he

was telling Mooka how Megaleep the caribou trusted only his nose, and

how he watched and played peekaboo with anything which he could not

smell, and how in a snowstorm--

Noel was off now like a brook, babbling a deal of caribou lore which he

had learned from Old Tomah the hunter, when Mooka, whose restless black

eyes were always wandering, seized his arm.

"Hush, brother, and look, oh, look! there on the big rock!"

Noel's eyes had already caught the Indian trick of seeing only what they

look for, and so of separating an animal instantly from his

surroundings, however well he hides. That is why the whole hillside

seemed suddenly to vanish, spruces and harebells, snow-fields and

drifting white clouds all grouping themselves, like the unnoticed frame

of a picture, around a great gray rock with a huge shaggy she-wolf

keeping watch over it, silent, alert, motionless.

Something stirred in the shadow of the old wolf's watch-tower, tossing

and eddying and growing suddenly quiet, as if the wind were playing

among dead oak leaves. The keen young eyes saw it instantly, dilating

with surprise and excitement. The next instant they had clutched each

other's arms.

"Ooooo!" from Mooka.

"Cubs; keep still!" from Noel.

And shrinking close to the rock under a friendly dwarf spruce they lay

still as two rabbits, watching with round eyes, eager but unafraid, the

antics of three brown wolf cubs that were chasing the flies and tumbling

over some invisible plaything before the door of the den.

Hardly had they made the discovery when the old wolf slipped down from

the rock and stood for an instant over her little ones. Why the play

should stop now, while the breeze was still their comrade and the

sunshine was brighter than ever, or why they should steal away into the

dark den more silently than they had come, none of the cubs could tell.

They felt the order and they obeyed instantly--and that is always the

wonder of watching little wild things at play. The old mother wolf

vanished among the rocks and appeared again higher on the ridge, turning

her head uneasily to try every breeze and rustle and moving shadow. Then

she went questing into the spruce woods, feeling but not understanding

some subtle excitement in the air that was not there before, and only

the two Indian children were left keeping watch over the great wild

hillside.

For over an hour they lay there expectantly, but nothing stirred near

the den; then they too slipped away, silently as the little wild things,

and made their slow way down the brook, hand in hand in the deepening

shadows. Scarcely had they gone when the bushes stirred and the old

she-wolf, that had been ranging every ridge and valley since she

disappeared at the unknown alarm, glided over the spot where a moment

before Mooka and Noel had been watching. Swiftly, silently she followed

their steps; found the old trails coming up and the fresh trails

returning; then, sure at last that no danger threatened her own little

ones, she loped away up the hill and over the topmost ridge to the

caribou barrens and the thickets where young rabbits were already

stirring about in the twilight.

That night, in the cabin under the cliffs, Old Tomah had to rehearse

again all the wolf lore learned in sixty years of hunting: how,

fortunately for the deer, these enormous wolves had never been abundant

and were now very rare, a few having been shot, and more poisoned in the

starving times, and the rest having vanished, mysteriously as wolves do,

for some unknown reason. Bears, which are easily trapped and shot and

whose skins are worth each a month's wages to the fishermen, still hold

their own and even increase on the great island; while the wolves, once

more numerous, are slowly vanishing, though they are never hunted, and

not even Old Tomah himself could set a trap cunningly enough to catch

one. The old hunter told, while Mooka and Noel held their breaths and

drew closer to the light, how once, when he made his camp alone under a

cliff on the lake shore, seven huge wolves, white as the snow, came

racing swift and silent over the ice straight at the fire which he had

barely time to kindle; how he shot two, and the others, seizing the fish

he had just caught through the ice for his own supper, vanished over the

bank; and he could not say even now whether they meant him harm or no.

Again, as he talked and the grim old face lighted up at the memory, they

saw him crouched with his sledge-dogs by a blazing fire all the long

winter night, and around him in the darkness blazing points of light,

the eyes of wolves flashing back the firelight, and gaunt white forms

flitting about like shadows, drawing nearer and nearer with ever-growing

boldness till they seized his largest dog--though the brute lay so near

the fire that his hair singed--and whisked it away with an appalling

outcry. And still again, when Tomah was lost three days in the interior,

they saw him wandering with his pack over endless barrens and through

gloomy spruce woods, and near him all the time a young wolf that

followed his steps quietly, with half-friendly interest, and came no

nearer day or night.

All these things and many more the children heard from Old Tomah, and

among all his hunting experiences and the stories and legends which he

told them there was not one to make them afraid. For the horrible story

of Red Riding Hood is not known among the Indians, who know well how

untrue the tale is to wolf nature, and how foolish it is to frighten

children with false stories of wolves and bears, misrepresenting them as

savage and bloodthirsty brutes, when in truth they are but shy,

peace-loving animals, whose only motive toward man, except when crazed

by wounds or hunger, is one of childish curiosity. All these ferocious

animal stories have their origin in other centuries and in distant

lands, where they may possibly have been true, but more probably are

just as false to animal nature; for they seem to reflect not the shy

animal that men glimpsed in the woods, but rather the boastings of some

hunter, who always magnifies his own praise by increasing the ferocity

of the game he has killed, or else the pure imagination of some ancient

nurse who tried to increase her scant authority by frightening her

children with terrible tales. Here certainly the Indian attitude of

kinship, gained by long centuries of living near to the animals and

watching them closely, comes nearer to the truth of things. That is why

little Mooka and Noel could listen for hours to Old Tomah's animal

stories and then go away to bed and happy dreams, longing for the light

so that they might be off again to watch at the wolf's den.

One thing only disturbed them for a moment. Even these children had wolf

memories and vied with Old Tomah in eagerness of telling. They

remembered one fearful winter, years ago, when most of the families of

the little fishing village on the East Harbor had moved far inland to

sheltered cabins in the deep woods to escape the cold and the fearful

blizzards of the coast. One still moonlit night, when the snow lay deep

and the cold was intense and all the trees were cracking like pistols in

the frost, a mournful howling rose all around their little cabin. Light

footfalls sounded on the crust; there were scratchings at the very door

and hoarse breathings at every crack; while the dogs, with hackles up

straight and stiff on their necks, fled howling under beds and tables.

And when Mooka and Noel went fearfully with their mother to the little

window--for the men were far away on a caribou hunt--there were gaunt

white wolves, five or six of them, flitting restlessly about in the

moonlight, scratching at the cracks and even raising themselves on their

hind legs to look in at the little windows.

Mooka shivered a bit when she remembered the uncanny scene, and felt

again the strong pressure of her mother's arms holding her close; but

Old Tomah brushed away her fears with a smile and a word, as he had

always done when, as little children, they had showed fear at the

thunder or the gale or the cry of a wild beast in the night, till they

had grown to look upon all Nature's phenomena as hiding a smile as

kindly as that of Old Tomah himself, who had a face wrinkled and

terribly grim, to be sure, but who could smile and tell a story so that

every child trusted him. The wolves were hungry, starving hungry, he

said, and wanted only a dog, or one of the pigs. And Mooka remembered

with a bright laugh the two unruly pigs that had been taken inland as a

hostage to famine, and that must be carefully guarded from the teeth of

hungry prowlers, for they would soon be needed to keep the children

themselves from starving. Every night at early sunset, when the trees

began to groan and the keen winds from the mountains came whispering

through the woods, the two pigs were taken into the snug kitchen, where

with the dogs they slept so close to the stove that she could always

smell pork a-frying. Not a husky dog there but would have killed and

eaten one of these little pigs if he could have caught him around the

corner of the house after nightfall, though you would never have

suspected it if you had seen them so close together, keeping each other

warm after the fire went out. And besides the dogs and the wolves there

were lynxes--big, round-headed, savage-looking creatures--that came

prowling out of the deep woods every night, hungry for a taste of the

little pigs; and now and then an enormous polar bear, that had landed

from an iceberg, would shuffle swiftly and fearlessly among the handful

of little cabins, leaving his great footprints in every yard and tearing

to pieces, as if made of straw, the heavy log pens to which some of the

fishermen had foolishly confided their pigs or sheep. He even entered

the woodsheds and rummaged about after a stray fishbone or an old

sealskin boot, making a great rowdydow in the still night; and only the

smell of man, or the report of an old gun fired at him by some brave

woman out of the half-open window, kept him from pushing his enormous

weight against the very doors of the cabins.

Thinking of all these things, Mooka forgot her fears of the white

wolves, remembering with a kind of sympathy how hungry all these shy

prowlers must be to leave their own haunts, whence the rabbits and seals

had vanished, and venture boldly into the yards of men. As for Noel, he

remembered with regret that he was too small at the time to use the long

bow which he now carried on his rabbit and goose hunts; and as he took

it from the wall, thrumming its chord of caribou sinew and fingering the

sharp edge of a long arrow, he was hoping for just such another winter,

longing to try his skill and strength on some of these midnight

prowlers--a lynx, perhaps, not to begin too largely on a polar bear. So

there was no fear at all, but only an eager wonder, when they followed

up the brook next day to watch at the wolf's den. And even when Noel

found a track, a light oval track, larger but more slender than a dog's,

in some moist sand close beside their own footprints and evidently

following them, they remembered only the young wolf that had followed

Tomah and pressed on the more eagerly.

Day after day they returned to their watch-tower on the flat rock, under

the dwarf spruce at the head of the brook, and lying there side by side

they watched the play of the young wolf cubs. Every day they grew more

interested as the spirit of play entered into themselves, understanding

the gladness of the wild rough-and-tumble when one of the cubs lay in

wait for another and leaped upon him from ambush; understanding also

something of the feeling of the gaunt old she-wolf as she looked down

gravely from her gray rock watching her growing youngsters. Once they

brought an old spyglass which they had borrowed from a fisherman, and

through its sea-dimmed lenses they made out that one of the cubs was

larger than the other two, with a droop at the tip of his right ear,

like a pointed leaf that has been creased sharply between the fingers.

Mooka claimed that wolf instantly for her own, as if they were watching

the husky puppies, and by his broken ear said she should know him again

when he grew to be a big wolf, if he should ever follow her, as his

father perhaps had followed Old Tomah; but Noel, thinking of his bow and

his long arrow with the sharp point, thought of the winter night long

ago and hoped that his two wolves would know enough to keep away when

the pack came again, for he did not see any way to recognize and spare

them, especially in the moonlight. So they lay there making plans and

dreaming dreams, gentle or savage, for the little cubs that played with

the feathers and grasshoppers and cloud shadows, all unconscious that

any eyes but their mother's saw or cared for their wild, free playing.

[Illustration: "Watching her growing youngsters"]