rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow
as the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the
fox turned to leap away. Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a
flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had
happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at
his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling
deep in their chests as the lust of their first fighting swept over
them. Then in vague, vanishing glimpses the old he-wolf appeared,
quartering swiftly, silently, back and forth through the thicket,
driving every living thing down-wind to where the cubs and the mother
were waiting to receive it.
[Illustration: "As the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the
back"]
That one lesson was enough for the cubs, though years would pass before
they could learn all the fine points of this beating the bush: to know
almost at a glance where the game, whether grouse or hare or fox or
lucivee, was hiding in the cover, and then for one wolf to drive it,
slowly or swiftly as the case might require, while the other hid beside
the most likely path of escape. A family of grouse must be coaxed along
and never see what is driving them, else they will flit into a tree and
be lost; while a cat must be startled out of her wits by a swift rush,
and sent flying away before she can make up her stupid mind what the row
is all about. A fox, almost as cunning as Wayeeses himself, must be made
to think that some dog enemy is slowly puzzling out his cold trail;
while a musquash searching for bake-apples, or a beaver going inland to
cut wood for his winter supplies of bark, must not be driven, but be
followed up swiftly by the path or canal by which he has ventured away
from the friendly water.
All these and many more things must be learned slowly at the expense of
many failures, especially when the cubs took to hunting alone and the
old wolves were not there to show them how; but they never forgot the
principle taught in that first rabbit drive,--that two hunters are
better than one to outwit any game when they hunt intelligently
together. That is why you so often find wolves going in pairs; and when
you study them or follow their tracks you discover that they play
continually into each other's hands. They seem to share the spoil as
intelligently as they catch it, the wolf that lies beside the runway and
pulls down the game giving up a portion gladly to the companion that
beats the bush, and rarely indeed is there any trace of quarreling
between them.
Like the eagles--which have long since learned the advantage of hunting
in pairs and of scouting for game in single file--the wolves, when
hunting deer on the open barrens where it is difficult to conceal their
advance, always travel in files, one following close behind the other;
so that, seen from in front where the game is watching, two or three
wolves will appear like a lone animal trotting across the plain. That
alarms the game far less at first; and not until the deer starts away
does the second wolf appear, shooting out from behind the leader. The
sight of another wolf appearing suddenly on his flank throws a young
deer into a panic, in which he is apt to lose his head and be caught by
the cunning hunters.
Curiously enough, the plains Indians, who travel in the same way when
hunting or scouting for enemies, first learned the trick--so an old
chief told me, and it is one of the traditions of his people--from
watching the timber wolves in their stealthy advance over the open
places.
The wolves were stealing through the woods all together, one late summer
afternoon, having beaten a cover without taking anything, when the
puzzled cubs suddenly found themselves alone. A moment before they had
been trotting along with the old wolves, nosing every cranny and knot
hole for mice and grubs, and stopping often for a roll and frolic, as
young cubs do in the gladness of life; now they pressed close together,
looking, listening, while a subtle excitement filled all the woods. For
the old wolves had disappeared, shooting ahead in great, silent bounds,
while the cubs waited with ears cocked and noses quivering, as if a
silent command had been understood.
The silence was intense; not a sound, not a stir in the quiet woods,
which seemed to be listening with the cubs and to be filled with the
same thrilling expectation. Suddenly the silence was broken by heavy
plunges far ahead, _crash! bump! bump!_ and there broke forth such an
uproar of yaps and howls as the cubs had never heard before. Instantly
they broke away on the trail, joining their shrill yelpings to the
clamor, so different from the ordinary stealthy wolf hunt, and filled
with a nameless excitement which they did not at all understand till the
reek of caribou poured into their hungry nostrils; whereupon they yelped
louder than ever. But they did not begin to understand the matter till
they caught glimpses of gray backs bounding hither and yon in the
underbrush, while the two great wolves raced easily on either side,
yapping sharply to increase the excitement, and guiding the startled,
foolish deer as surely, as intelligently, as a pair of collies herd a
flock of frightened sheep.
When the cubs broke out of the dense cover at last they found the two
old wolves sitting quietly on their tails before a rugged wall of rocks
that stretched away on either hand at the base of a great bare hill. In
front of them was a young cow caribou, threatening savagely with horns
and hoofs, while behind her cowered two half-grown fawns crowded into a
crevice of the rocks. Anger, rather than fear, blazed out in the
mother's mild eyes. Now she turned swiftly to press her excited young
ones back against the sheltering wall; now she whirled with a savage
grunt and charged headlong at the wolves, which merely leaped aside and
sat down silently again to watch the game, till the cubs raced out and
hovered uneasily about with a thousand questions in every eye and ear
and twitching nostril.
The reason for the hunt was now plain enough. Up to this time the
caribou had been let severely alone, though they were very numerous,
scattered through the dense coverts in every valley and on every
hillside. For Wayeeses is no wanton killer, as he is so often
represented to be, but sticks to small game whenever he can find it, and
leaves the deer unmolested. As for his motive in the matter, who shall
say, since no one understands the half of what a wolf does every day?
Perhaps it is a mere matter of taste, a preference for the smaller and
more juicy tidbits; more likely it is a combination of instinct and
judgment, with a possible outlook for the future unusual with beasts of
prey. The moment the young wolves take to harrying the deer--as they
invariably do if the mother wolf be not with them--the caribou leave the
country. The herds become, moreover, so wild and suspicious after a very
little wolf hunting that they are exceedingly difficult of approach; and
there is no living thing on earth, not even a white wolf or a trained
greyhound, that can tire or overtake a startled caribou. The swinging
rack of these big white wanderers looks easy enough when you see it; but
when the fleet staghounds are slipped, as has been more than once tested
in Newfoundland, try as hard as they will they cannot keep within sight
of the deer for a single quarter-mile, and no limit has ever yet been
found, either by dog or wolf, to Megaleep's tirelessness. So the old
wolves, relying possibly upon past experience, keep the cubs and hold
themselves strictly to small game as long as it can possibly be found.
Then when the bitter days of late winter come, with their scarcity of
small game and their unbearable hunger, the wolves turn to the caribou
as a last resort, killing a few here by stealth, rather than speed, and
then, when the game grows wild, going far off to another range where the
deer have not been disturbed and so can be approached more easily.
On this afternoon, however, the old mother wolf had run plump upon the
caribou and her fawns in the midst of a thicket, and had leaped forward
promptly to round them up for her hungry cubs. It would have been the
easiest matter in the world for an old wolf to hamstring one of the slow
fawns, or the mother caribou herself as she hovered in the rear to
defend her young; but there were other thoughts in the shaggy gray head
that had seen so much hunting. So the mother wolf drove the deer slowly,
puzzling them more and more, as a collie distracts the herd by his
yapping, out into the open where her cubs might join in the hunting.
The wolves now drew back, all save the mother, which advanced
hesitatingly to where the caribou stood with lowered head, watching
every move. Suddenly the cow charged, so swiftly, furiously, that the
old wolf seemed almost caught, and tumbled away with the broad hoofs
striking savagely at her flanks. Farther and farther the caribou drove
her enemy, roused now to frenzy at the wolf's nearness and apparent
cowardice. Then she whirled in a panic and rushed back to her little
ones, only to find that all the other wolves, as if frightened by her
furious charge, had drawn farther back from the cranny in the rocks.
Again the old she-wolf approached cautiously, and again the caribou
plunged at her and followed her lame retreat with headlong fury. An
electric shock seemed suddenly to touch the huge he-wolf. Like a flash
he leaped in on the fawns. One quick snap of the long jaws with the
terrible fangs; then, as if the whole thing were a bit of play, he loped
away easily with the cubs, circling to join the mother wolf, which
strangely enough did not return to the attack as the caribou charged
back, driving the cubs and the old he-wolf away like a flock of sheep.
The coast was now clear, not an enemy in the way; and the mother
caribou, with a triumphant bleat to her fawns to follow, plunged back
into the woods whence she had come.
One fawn only followed her. The other took a step or two, sank to his
knees, and rolled over on his side. When the wolves drew near quietly,
without a trace of the ferocity or the howling clamor with which such
scenes are usually pictured, the game was quite dead, one quick snap of
the old wolf's teeth just behind the fore legs having pierced the heart
more surely than a hunter's bullet. And the mother caribou, plunging
wildly away through the brush with the startled fawn jumping at her
heels, could not know that her mad flight was needless; that the
terrible enemy which had spared her and let her go free had no need nor
desire to follow.
* * * * *
The fat autumn had now come with its abundant fare, and the caribou were
not again molested. Flocks of grouse and ptarmigan came out of the thick
coverts, in which they had been hiding all summer, and began to pluck
the berries of the open plains, where they could easily be waylaid and
caught by the growing wolf cubs. Plover came in hordes, sweeping over
the Straits from the Labrador; and when the wolves surrounded a flock of
the queer birds and hitched nearer and nearer, sinking their gray bodies
in the yielding gray moss till they looked like weather-worn logs, the
hunting was full of tense excitement, though the juicy mouthfuls were
few and far between. Fox cubs roamed abroad away from their mothers,
self-willed and reveling in the abundance; and it was now easy for two
of the young wolves to drive a fox out of his daytime cover and catch
him as he stole away.
After the plover came the ducks in myriads, filling the ponds and
flashets of the vast barrens with tumultuous quacking; and the young
wolves learned, like the foxes, to decoy the silly birds by rousing
their curiosity. They would hide in the grass, while one played and
rolled about on the open shore, till the ducks saw him and began to
stretch their necks and gabble their amazement at the strange thing,
which they had never seen before. Shy and wild as he naturally is, a
duck, like a caribou or a turkey, must take a peek at every new thing.
Now silent, now gabbling all together, the flock would veer and scatter
and draw together again, and finally swing in toward the shore, every
neck drawn straight as a string the better to see what was going on.
Nearer and nearer they would come, till a swift rush out of the grass
sent them off headlong, splashing and quacking with crazy clamor. But
one or two always stayed behind with the wolves to pay the price of
curiosity.
Then there were the young geese, which gathered in immense flocks in the
shallow bays, preparing and drilling for the autumn flight. Late in the
afternoon the old mother wolf with her cubs would steal down through the
woods, hiding and watching the flocks, and following them stealthily as
they moved along the shore. At night the great flock would approach a
sandbar, well out of the way of rocks and brush and everything that
might hide an enemy, and go to sleep in close little family groups on
the open shore. As the night darkened four shadows would lengthen out
from the nearest bank of shadows, creeping onward to the sand-bar with
the slow patience of the hours. A rush, a startled _honk!_ a terrific
clamor of wings and throats and smitten water. Then the four shadows
would rise up from the sand and trot back to the woods, each with a
burden on its shoulders and a sparkle in the close-set eyes over the
pointed jaws, which were closed on the neck of a goose, holding it tight
lest any outcry escape to tell the startled flock what had happened.
Besides this abundant game there were other good things to eat, and the
cubs rarely dined of the same dish twice in succession. Salmon and big
sea-trout swarmed now in every shallow of the clear brooks, and, after
spawning, these fish were much weakened and could easily be caught by a
little cunning. Every day and night the tide ebbed and flowed, and every
tide left its contribution in windrows of dead herring and caplin, with
scattered crabs and mussels for a relish, like plums in a pudding. A
wolf had only to trot for a mile or two along the tide line of a lonely
beach, picking up the good things which the sea had brought him, and
then go back to sleep or play satisfied. And if Wayeeses wanted game to
try his mettle and cunning, there were the big fat seals barking on the
black rocks, and he had only to cut between them and the sea and throw
himself upon the largest seal as the herd floundered ponderously back to
safety. A wolf rarely grips and holds an enemy; he snaps and lets go,
and snaps again at every swift chance; but here he must either hold fast
or lose his big game; and what between holding and letting go, as the
seals whirled with bared teeth and snapped viciously in turn, as they
scrambled away to the sea, the wolves had a lively time of it. Often
indeed, spite of three or four wolves, a big seal would tumble into the
tide, where the sharks followed his bloody trail and soon finished him.
Now for the first time the wolves, led by the rich abundance, began to
kill more than they needed for food and to hide it away, like the
squirrels, in anticipation of the coming winter. Like the blue and the
Arctic foxes, a strange instinct to store things seems to stir dimly at
times within them. Occasionally, instead of eating and sleeping after a
kill, the cubs, led by the mother wolf, would hunt half of the day and
night and carry all they caught to the snow-fields. There each one would
search out a cranny in the rocks and hide his game, covering it over
deeply with snow to kill the scent of it from the prowling foxes. Then
for days at a time they would forget the coming winter, and play as
heedlessly as if the woods would always be as full of game as now; and
again the mood would be upon them strongly, and they would kill all they
could find and hide it in another place. But the instinct--if indeed it
were instinct, and not the natural result of the mother's own
experience--was weak at best; and the first time the cubs were hungry or
lazy they would trail off to the hidden store. Long before the spring
with its bitter need was upon them they had eaten everything, and had
returned to the empty storehouse at least a dozen times, as a dog goes
again and again to the place where he once hid a bone, and nosed it all
over regretfully to be quite sure that they had overlooked nothing.
More interesting to the wolves in these glad days than the game or the
storehouse, or the piles of caplin which they cached under the sand on
the shore, were the wandering herds of caribou,--splendid old stags with
massive antlers, and long-legged, inquisitive fawns trotting after the
sleek cows, whose heads carried small pointed horns, more deadly by far
than the stags' cumbersome antlers. Wherever the wolves went they
crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets,
sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, endless lines
converging upon the vast open barrens where the caribou gathered to
select their mates for another year. Where they all came from was a
mystery that filled the cubs' heads with constant wonder. During the
summer you see little of them,--here a cow with her fawn hiding deep in
the cover, there a big stag standing out like a watchman on the mountain
top; but when the early autumn comes they are everywhere, crossing
rivers and lakes at regular points, and following deep paths which their
ancestors have followed for countless generations.
The cows and fawns seemed gentle and harmless enough, though their very
numbers filled the young wolves with a certain awe. After their first
lesson it would have been easy enough for the cubs to have killed all
they wanted and to grow fat and lazy as the bears, which were now
stuffing themselves before going off to sleep for the winter; but the
old mother wolf held them firmly in check, for with plenty of small game
everywhere, all wolves are minded to go quietly about their own business
and let the caribou follow their own ways. When October came it brought
the big stags into the open,--splendid, imposing beasts, with swollen
necks and fierce red eyes and long white manes tossing in the wind. Then
the wolves had to stand aside; for the stags roamed over all the land,
pawing the moss in fury, bellowing their hoarse challenge, and charging
like a whirlwind upon every living thing that crossed their paths.
When the mother wolf, with her cubs at heel, saw one of these big furies
at a distance she would circle prudently to avoid him. Again, as the
cubs hunted rabbits, they would hear a crash of brush and a furious
challenge as some quarrelsome stag winded them; and the mother with her
cubs gathered close about her would watch alertly for his headlong rush.
As he charged out the wolves would scatter and leap nimbly aside, then
sit down on their tails in a solemn circle and watch as if studying the
strange beast. Again and again he would rush upon them, only to find
that he was fighting the wind. Mad as a hornet, he would single out a
cub and follow him headlong through brush and brake till some subtle
warning thrilled through his madness, telling him to heed his flank;
then as he whirled he would find the savage old mother close at his
heels, her white fangs bared and a dangerous flash in her eyes as she
saw the hamstring so near, so easy to reach. One spring and a snap, and
the ramping, masterful stag would have been helpless as a rabbit, his
tendons cut cleanly at the hock; another snap and he must come down,
spite of his great power, and be food for the growing cubs that sat on
their tails watching him, unterrified now by his fierce challenge. But
Megaleep's time had not yet come; besides, he was too tough. So the
wolves studied him awhile, amused perhaps at the rough play; then, as if
at a silent command, they vanished like shadows into the nearest cover,
leaving the big stag in his rage to think himself master of all the
world.
Sometimes as the old he-wolf ranged alone, a silent, powerful,
noble-looking brute, he would meet the caribou, and there would be a
fascinating bit of animal play. He rarely turned aside, knowing his own
power, and the cows and fawns after one look would bound aside and rack
away at a marvelous pace over the barrens. In a moment or two, finding
that they were not molested, they would turn and watch the wolf
curiously till he disappeared, trying perhaps to puzzle it out why the
ferocious enemy of the deep snows and the bitter cold should now be
harmless as the passing birds.
Again a young bull with his keen, polished spike-horns, more active and
dangerous but less confident than the over-antlered stags, would stand
in the old wolf's path, disputing with lowered front the right of way.
Here the right of way meant a good deal, for in many places on the high
plains the scrub spruces grow so thickly that a man can easily walk over
the tops of them on his snow-shoes, and the only possible passage in
summer-time is by means of the numerous paths worn through the scrub by
the passing of animals for untold ages. So one or the other of the two
splendid brutes that now approached each other in the narrow way must
turn aside or be beaten down underfoot.
Quietly, steadily, the old wolf would come on till almost within
springing distance, when he would stop and lift his great head,
wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning
deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he
would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle
nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take
his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along
the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; while the young bull
would stand wondering, his body hidden in the scrub and his head thrust
into the narrow path to look after his strange adversary.
Another time, as the old wolf ranged along the edges of the barrens
where the caribou herds were gathering, he would hear the challenge of a
huge stag and the warning crack of twigs and the thunder of hoofs as the
brute charged. Still the wolf trotted quietly along, watching from the
corners of his eyes till the stag was upon him, when he sprang lightly
aside and let the rush go harmlessly by. Sitting on his tail he would
watch the caribou closely--and who could tell what was passing behind
those cunning eyes that glowed steadily like coals, unruffled as yet by
the passing winds, but ready at a rough breath to break out in flames of
fire? Again and again the stag would charge, growing more furious at
every failure; and every time the wolf leaped aside he left a terrible
gash in his enemy's neck or side, punishing him cruelly for his bullying
attack, yet strangely refusing to kill, as he might have done, or to
close on the hamstring with one swift snap that would have put the big
brute out of the fight forever. At last, knowing perhaps from past
experience the uselessness of punishing or of disputing with this madman
that felt no wounds in his rage, the wolf would lope away to cover,
followed by a victorious bugle-cry that rang over the wide barren and
echoed back from the mountain side. Then the wolf would circle back
stealthily and put his nose down into the stag's hoof-marks for a long,
deep sniff, and go quietly on his way again. A wolf's nose never
forgets. When he finds that trail wandering with a score of others over
the snow, in the bitter days to come when the pack are starving,
Wayeeses will know whom he is following.