and give them something pleasant to do besides eating and sleeping. When
the hunter's moon rose full and clear over the woods, filling all
animals with strange unrest, the pack would circle the great harbor,
trotting silently along, nose to tail in single file, keeping on the
high ridge of mountains and looking like a distant train of husky dogs
against the moonlight. When over the fishing village they would sit
down, each one on the loftiest rock he could find, raise their muzzles
to the stars, and join in the long howl, _Ooooooo-wow-ow-ow!_ a
terrible, wailing cry that seemed to drive every dog within hearing
stark crazy. Out of the village lanes far below they rushed headlong,
and sitting on the beach in a wide circle, heads all in and tails out,
they raised their noses to the distant, wolf-topped pinnacles and joined
in the wailing answer. Then the wolves would sit very still, listening
with cocked ears to the cry of their captive kinsmen, till the dismal
howling died away into silence, when they would start the clamor into
life again by giving the wolf's challenge.
Why they did it, what they felt there in the strange unreality of the
moonlight, and what hushed their profound enmity, none can tell.
Ordinarily the wolf hates both fox and dog, and kills them whenever they
cross his path; but to-night the foxes were yapping an answer all around
them, and sometimes a few adventurous dogs would scale the mountains
silently to sit on the rocks and join in the wild wolf chorus, and not a
wolf stirred to molest them. All were more or less lunatic, and knew not
what they were doing.
For hours the uncanny comedy would drag itself on into the tense
midnight silence, the wailing cry growing more demented and heartrending
as the spell of ancient days fell again upon the degenerate huskies. Up
on the lonely mountain tops the moon looked down, still and cold, and
saw upon every pinnacle a dog or a wolf, each with his head turned up at
the sky, howling his heart out. Down in the hamlet, scattered for miles
along Deep Arm and the harbor shore, sleepers stirred uneasily at the
clamor, the women clutching their babies close, the men cursing the
crazy brutes and vowing all sorts of vengeance on the morrow. Then the
wolves would slip away like shadows into the vast upland barrens, and
the dogs, restless as witches with some unknown excitement, would run
back to whine and scratch at the doors of their masters' cabins.
Soon the big snowflakes were whirling in the air, busily weaving a soft
white winding-sheet for the autumn which was passing away. And truly it
had been a good time for the wolf cubs, as for most wild animals; and
they had grown large and strong with their fat feeding, and wise with
their many experiences. The ducks and geese vanished, driving southward
ahead of the fierce autumn gales, and only the late broods of hardy
eiders were left for a little season. Herring and caplin had long since
drifted away into unknown depths, where the tides flowed endlessly over
them and brought never a one ashore. Hares and ptarmigans turned white
to hide on the snow, so that wolf and fox would pass close by without
seeing them. Wood-mice pushed their winding tunnels and made their
vaulted play rooms deep under the drifts, where none might molest nor
make them afraid; and all game grew wary and wild, learning from
experience, as it always does, that only the keen can survive the fall
hunting. So the long winter, with its snow and ice and its bitter cold
and its grim threat of famine, settled heavily over Harbor Weal and the
Long Range where Wayeeses must find his living.
_The White Wolf's Hunting_
Threatening as the northern winter was, with its stern order to the
birds to depart, and to the beasts to put on their thick furs, and to
the little folk of the snow to hide themselves in white coats, and to
all living things to watch well the ways that they took, it could bring
no terror to Wayeeses and her powerful young cubs. The gladness of life
was upon them, with none of its pains or anxieties or fears, as we know
them; and they rolled and tumbled about in the first deep snow with the
abandon of young foxes, filled with wonder at the strange blanket that
covered the rough places of earth so softly and made their light
footsteps more noiseless than before. For to be noiseless and
inconspicuous, and so in harmony with his surroundings, is the first
desire of every creature of the vast solitudes.
Meeting the wolves now, as they roamed wild and free over the great
range, one would hardly have recognized the little brown creatures that
he saw playing about the den where the trail began. The cubs were
already noble-looking brutes, larger than the largest husky dog; and the
parents were taller, with longer legs and more massive heads and
powerful jaws, than any great timber-wolf. A tremendous vitality
thrilled in them from nose to paw tips. Their great bodies, as they lay
quiet in the snow with heads raised and hind legs bent under them, were
like powerful engines, tranquil under enormous pressure; and when they
rose the movement was like the quick snap of a steel spring. Indeed,
half the ordinary movements of Wayeeses are so quick that the eye cannot
follow them. One instant a wolf would be lying flat on his side, his
long legs outstretched on the moss, his eyes closed in the sleepy
sunshine, his body limp as a hound's after a fox chase; the next
instant, like the click and blink of a camera shutter, he would be
standing alert on all four feet, questioning the passing breeze or
looking intently into your eyes; and you could not imagine, much less
follow, the recoil of twenty big electric muscles that at some subtle
warning had snapped him automatically from one position to the other.
They were all snow-white, with long thick hair and a heavy mane that
added enormously to their imposing appearance; and they carried their
bushy tails almost straight out as they trotted along, with a slight
crook near the body,--the true wolf sign that still reappears in many
collies to tell a degenerate race of a noble ancestry.
After the first deep snows the family separated, led by their growing
hunger and by the difficulty of finding enough game in one cover to
supply all their needs. The mother and the smallest cub remained
together; the two larger cubs ranged on the other side of the mountain,
beating the bush and hunting into each other's mouth, as they had been
trained to do; while the big he-wolf hunted successfully by himself, as
he had done for years. Scattered as they were, they still kept track of
each other faithfully, and in a casual way looked after one another's
needs. Wherever he was, a wolf seemed to know by instinct where his
fellows were hunting many miles away. When in doubt he had only to mount
the highest hill and give the rallying cry, which carried an enormous
distance in the still cold air, to bring the pack swiftly and silently
about him.
At times, when the cubs were hungry after a two-days fast, they would
hear, faint and far away, the food cry, _yap-yap-yooo! yap-yap-yoooooo!_
quivering under the stars in the tense early-morning air, and would dart
away to find game freshly killed by one of the old wolves awaiting them.
Again, at nightfall, a cub's hunting cry, _ooooo, ow-ow! ooooo, ow-ow!_
a deep, almost musical hoot with two short barks at the end, would come
singing down from the uplands; and the wolves, leaving instantly the
game they were following, would hasten up to find the two cubs herding a
caribou in a cleft of the rocks,--a young caribou that had lost his
mother at the hands of the hunters, and that did not know how to take
care of himself. And one of the cubs would hold him there, sitting on
his tail in front of the caribou to prevent his escape, while the other
cub called the wolves away from their own hunting to come and join the
feast.
Whether this were a conscious attempt to spare the game, or to alarm it
as little as need be, it is impossible to say. Certainly the wolves
know, better apparently than men, that persistent hunting destroys its
own object, and that caribou especially, when much alarmed by dogs or
wolves or men, will take the alarm quickly, and the scattered herds,
moved by a common impulse of danger, will trail far away to other
ranges. That is why the wolf, unlike the less intelligent dog, hunts
always in a silent, stealthy, unobtrusive way; and why he stops hunting
and goes away the instant his own hunger is satisfied or another wolf
kills enough for all. And that is also the probable reason why he lets
the deer alone as long as he can find any other game.
This same intelligent provision was shown in another curious way. When a
wolf in his wide ranging found a good hunting-ground where small game
was plentiful, he would snap up a rabbit silently in the twilight and
then go far away, perhaps to join the other cubs in a gambol, or to
follow them to the cliffs over a fishing village and set all the dogs to
howling. By day he would lie close in some thick cover, miles away from
his hunting-ground. At twilight he would steal back and hunt quietly,
just long enough to get his game, and then trot away again, leaving the
cover as unharried as if there were not a wolf in the whole
neighborhood.
Such a good hunting-ground cannot long remain hidden from other prowlers
in the wilderness; and Wayeeses, who was keeping his discovery to
himself, would soon cross the trail of a certain old fox returning day
after day to the same good covers. No two foxes, nor mice, nor men, nor
any other two animals for that matter, ever leave the same scent,--any
old hound, which will hold steadily to one fox though a dozen others
cross or cover his trail, will show you that plainly in a day's
hunting,--and the wolf would soon know surely that the same fox was
poaching every night on his own preserves while he was away. To a
casual, wandering hunter he paid no attention; but this cunning poacher
must be laid by the heels, else there would not be a single rabbit left
in the cover. So Wayeeses, instead of hunting himself at twilight when
the rabbits are stirring, would wait till midday, when the sun is warm
and foxes are sleepy, and then come back to find the poacher's trail and
follow it to where Eleemos was resting for the day in a sunny opening in
the scrub. There Wayeeses would steal upon him from behind and put an
end to his poaching; or else, if the fox used the same nest daily, as is
often the case when he is not disturbed, the wolf would circle the scrub
warily to find the path by which Eleemos usually came out on his night's
hunting. When he found that out Wayeeses would dart away in the long,
rolling gallop that carries a wolf swiftly over the roughest country
without fatigue. In an hour or two he would be back again with another
wolf. Then Eleemos, dozing away in the winter sunshine, would hear an
unusual racket in the scrub behind him,--some heavy animal brushing
about heedlessly and sniffing loudly at a cold trail. No wolf certainly,
for a wolf makes no noise. So Eleemos would get down from his warm rock
and slip away, stopping to look back and listen jauntily to the clumsy
brute behind him, till he ran plump into the jaws of the other wolf that
was watching alert and silent beside the runway.
When the snows were deep and soft the wolves took to hunting the
lynxes,--big, savage, long-clawed fighters that swarm in the interior of
Newfoundland and play havoc with the small game. For a single lynx the
wolves hunted in pairs, trailing the big prowler stealthily and rushing
upon him from behind with a fierce uproar to startle the wits out of his
stupid head and send him off headlong, as cats go, before he knew what
was after him. Away he would go in mighty jumps, sinking shoulder deep,
often indeed up to his tufted ears, at every plunge. After him raced the
wolves, running lightly and taking advantage of the holes he had made in
the soft snow, till a swift snap in his flank brought Upweekis up with a
ferocious snarl to tear in pieces his pursuers.
Then began as savage a bit of fighting as the woods ever witness, teeth
against talons, wolf cunning against cat ferocity. Crouched in the snow,
spitting and snarling, his teeth bared and round eyes blazing and long
claws aching to close in a death grip, Upweekis waited impatient as a
fury for the rush. He is an ugly fighter; but he must always get close,
gripping his enemy with teeth and fore claws while the hind claws get in
their deadly work, kicking downward in powerful spasmodic blows and
ripping everything before them. A dog would rush in now and be torn to
pieces; but not so the wolves. Dancing lightly about the big lynx they
would watch their chance to leap and snap, sometimes avoiding the blow
of the swift paw with its terrible claws, and sometimes catching it on
their heavy manes; but always a long red mark showed on the lynx's
silver fur as the wolves' teeth clicked with the voice of a steel trap
and they leaped aside without serious injury. As the big cat grew blind
in his fury they would seize their chance like a flash and leap
together; one pair of long jaws would close hard on the spine behind the
tufted ears; another pair would grip a hind leg, while the wolves sprang
apart and braced to hold. Then the fight was all over; and the moose
birds, in pairs, came flitting in silently to see if there were not a
few unconsidered trifles of the feast for them to dispose of.
Occasionally, at nightfall, the wolves' hunting cry would ring out of
the woods as one of the cubs discovered three or four of the lynxes
growling horribly over some game they had pulled down together. For
Upweekis too, though generally a solitary fellow, often roams with a
savage band of freebooters to hunt the larger animals in the bitter
winter weather. No young wolf would ever run into one of these bands
alone; but when the pack rolled in upon them like a tempest the lynxes
would leap squalling away in a blind rush; and the two big wolves,
cutting in from the ends of the charging line, would turn a lynx kit
deftly aside for the cubs to hold. Then another for themselves, and the
hunt was over,--all but the feast at the end of it.
When a big and cunning lynx took to a tree at the first alarm the wolves
would go aside to leeward, where Upweekis could not see them, but where
their noses told them perfectly all that he was doing. Then began the
long game of patience, the wolves waiting for the game to come down, and
the lynx waiting for the wolves to go away. Upweekis was at a
disadvantage, for he could not see when he had won; and he generally
came down in an hour or two, only to find the wolves hot on his trail
before he had taken a dozen jumps. Whereupon he took to another tree and
the game began again.
[Illustration: "The silent, appalling death-watch began."]
When the night was exceeding cold--and one who has not felt it can
hardly imagine the bitter, killing intensity of a northern midnight in
February--the wolves, instead of going away, would wait under the tree
in which the lynx had taken refuge, and the silent, appalling
death-watch began. A lynx, though heavily furred, cannot long remain
exposed in the intense cold without moving. Moreover he must grip the
branch on which he sits more or less firmly with his claws, to keep from
falling; and the tense muscles, which flex the long claws to drive them
into the wood, soon grow weary and numb in the bitter frost. The wolves
meanwhile trot about to keep warm; while the stupid cat sits in one spot
slowly perishing, and never thinks of running up and down the tree to
keep himself alive. The feet grow benumbed at last, powerless to hold on
any longer, and the lynx tumbles off into the wolves' jaws; or else,
knowing the danger, he leaps for the nearest wolf and dies fighting.
Spite of the killing cold, the problem of keeping warm was to the wolves
always a simple one. Moving along through the winter night, always on a
swift, silent trot, they picked up what game came in their way, and
scarcely felt the eager cold that nipped at their ears, or the wind,
keen as an icicle, that strove to penetrate the shaggy white coats that
covered them. When their hunger was satisfied, or when the late day came
and found them still hunting hopefully, they would push their way into
the thick scrub from one of the numerous paths and lie down on a nest of
leaves, which even in midwinter were dry as if no snow or rain had ever
fallen. There, where no wind or gale however strong could penetrate, and
with the snow filling the low branches overhead and piled over them in a
soft, warm blanket three feet thick, they would push their sensitive
noses into their own thick fur to keep them warm, and sleep comfortably
till the early twilight came and called them out again to the hunting.
At times, when not near the scrub, they would burrow deep into a great
drift of snow and sleep in the warmest kind of a nest,--a trick that the
husky dogs, which are but wolves of yesterday, still remember. Like all
wild animals, they felt the coming of a storm long before the first
white flakes began to whirl in the air; and when a great storm
threatened they would lie down to sleep in a cave, or a cranny of the
rocks, and let the drifts pile soft and warm over them. However long the
storm, they never stirred abroad; partly for their own comfort, partly
because all game lies hid at such times and it is practically
impossible, even for a wolf, to find it. When a wolf has fed full he can
go a week without eating and suffer no great discomfort. So Wayeeses
would lie close and warm while the snow piled deep around him and the
gale raged over the sea and mountains, but passed unfelt and unheeded
over his head. Then, when the storm was over, he pawed his way up
through the drift and came out in a new, bright world, where the game,
with appetites sharpened by the long fast, was already stirring briskly
in every covert.
When March came, the bitterest month of all for the Wood Folk, even
Wayeeses was often hard pressed to find a living. Small game grew scarce
and very wild; the caribou had wandered far away to other ranges; and
the cubs would dig for hours after a mouse, or stalk a snowbird, or wait
with endless patience for a red squirrel to stop his chatter and come
down to search under the snow for a fir cone that he had hidden there in
the good autumn days. And once, when the hunger within was more nipping
than the eager cold without, one of the cubs found a bear sleeping in
his winter den among the rocks. With a sharp hunting cry, that sang like
a bullet over the frozen wastes, he called the whole pack about him.
While the rest lay in hiding the old he-wolf approached warily and
scratched Mooween out of his den, and then ran away to entice the big
brute into the open ground, where the pack rolled in upon him and killed
him in a terrible fight before he had fairly shaken the sleep out of his
eyes.
Old Tomah, the trapper, was abroad now, taking advantage of the spring
hunger. The wolves often crossed his snow-shoe trail, or followed it
swiftly to see whither it led. For a wolf, like a farm dog, is never
satisfied till he knows the ways of every living thing that crosses his
range. Following the broad trail Wayeeses would find here a trapped
animal, struggling desperately with the clog and the cruel gripping
teeth, there the flayed carcass of a lynx or an otter, and yonder the
leg of a dog or a piece of caribou meat hung by a cord over a runway,
with the snow disturbed beneath it where the deadly trap was hidden. One
glance, or a sniff at a distance, was enough for the wolf. Lynxes do not
go about the range without their skins, and meat does not naturally hang
on trees; so Wayeeses, knowing all the ways of the woods, would ignore
these baits absolutely. Nevertheless he followed the snow-shoe trails
until he knew where every unnatural thing lay hidden; and no matter how
hungry he was, or how cunningly the old Indian hid his devices, or
however deep the new snow covered all traces of man's work, Wayeeses
passed by on the other side and kept his dainty feet out of every snare
and pitfall.
Once, when the two cubs that hunted together were hard pinched with
hunger, they found Old Tomah in the twilight and followed him
stealthily. The old Indian was swinging along, silent as a shadow of the
woods, his gun on his shoulder and some skins on his back, heading
swiftly for the little hut under the cliff, where he burrowed for the
night as snug as a bear in his den. An old wolf would have known
instantly the danger, for man alone bites at a distance; but the
lop-eared cub, which was larger than his brother and therefore the
leader, raised his head for the hunting cry. The first yap had hardly
left his throat when the thunder roared, and something seared the wolf's
side like a hot iron. The cubs vanished like the smoke from the old gun.
Then the Indian came swiftly back on the trail, peering about with hawk
eyes to see the effect of his shot.
"By cosh! miss um dat time. Mus' be powder no good." Then, as he read
the plain record in the snow, "One,--by cosh! two hwulf, lil fool hwulf,
follow my footin'. Mus' be more, come soon pretty quick now; else he
don' howl dat way. Guess mebbe ol' Injun better stay in house nights."
And he trailed warily back to hide himself behind a rock and watch till
dark in front of his little _commoosie_.
Old Tomah's sleep was sound as usual that night; so he could not see the
five shadows that stole out of the woods, nor hear the light footfalls
that circled his camp, nor feel the breath, soft as an eddy of wind in a
spruce top, that whiffed at the crack under his door and drifted away
again. Next morning he saw the tracks and understood them; and as he
trailed away through the still woods he was wondering, in his silent
Indian way, why an old wolf should always bring Malsunsis, the cub, for
a good look and a sniff at anything that he is to avoid ever after.
When all else fails follow the caribou,--that is the law which governs
the wolf in the hungry days; but before they crossed the mountains and
followed the long valleys to the far southern ranges the wolves went
back to the hills, where the trail began, for a more exciting and
dangerous kind of hunting. The pack had held closer together of late;
for the old wolves must often share even a scant fox or rabbit with the
hungry and inexperienced youngsters. Now, when famine drove them to the
very doors of the one enemy to be feared, only the wisest and wariest
old wolf was fit to lead the foray.
The little fishing village was buried under drifts and almost deserted.
A few men lingered to watch the boats and houses; but the families had
all gone inland to the winter tilts for wood and shelter. By night the
wolves would come stealthily to prowl among the deserted lanes; and the
fishermen, asleep in their clothes under caribou skins, or sitting close
by the stove behind barred doors, would know nothing of the huge, gaunt
forms that flitted noiselessly past the frosted windows. If a pig were
left in his pen a sudden terrible squealing would break out on the still
night; and when the fisherman rushed out the pen would be empty, with
nothing whatever to account for piggie's disappearance. For to their
untrained eyes even the tracks of the wolves were covered up by those of
the numerous big huskies. If a cat prowled abroad, or an uneasy dog
scratched to be let out, there would be a squall, a yelp,--and the cat
would not come back, and the dog would never scratch at the door to be
let in again.
Only when nothing stirred in the village, when the dogs and cats had
been spirited away, and when not even a rat stole from under the houses
to gnaw at a fishbone, would the fishermen know of their big silent
visitors. Then the wolves would gather on a snow-drift just outside the
village and raise a howl, a frightful wail of famine and disappointment,
that made the air shudder. From within the houses the dogs answered with
mad clamor. A door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a
fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and
capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as
a bowstring; a sudden yelp--_Hui-hui_, as the fisherman whistled to the
dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat
that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in
vain, and shiver, and go back to the fire again.