far back on the hills to haul fire-wood, or poles for the new
fish-flakes. The wolves, watching from their old den, would follow at a
distance to pick up a careless dog that ventured away from the fire to
hunt rabbits when his harness was taken off. Occasionally a solitary
wood-chopper would start with sudden alarm as a big white form glided
into sight, and the alarm would be followed by genuine terror as he
found himself surrounded by five huge wolves that sat on their tails
watching him curiously. Gripping his ax he would hurry back to call his
companions and harness the dogs and hurry back to the village before the
early darkness should fall upon them. As the komatik went careering over
the snow, the dogs yelping and straining at the harness, the men running
alongside shouting _Hi-hi_ and cracking their whips, they could still
see, over their shoulders, the wolves following lightly close behind;
but when they rushed breathless into their houses, and grabbed their
guns, and ran back on the trail, there was nothing to be seen. For the
wolves, quick as light to feel the presence of danger, were already far
away, trotting swiftly up the frozen arm of the harbor, following
another sledge trail which came down that morning from the wilderness.
That same night the wolves appeared silently in the little lodge, far up
the Southeast Brook, where in a sheltered hollow of the hills the
fishermen's families were sleeping away the bitter winter. Here for one
long night they watched and waited in vain; for every living thing was
safe in the tilts behind barred doors. In the morning little Noel's eyes
kindled as he saw the wolves' tracks; and when they came back again the
tilts were watching. As the lop-eared cub darted after a cat that shot
like a ray of moonlight under a cabin, a window opened noiselessly, and
_zing!_ a bowstring twanged its sharp warning in the tense silence. With
a yelp the wolf tore the arrow from his shoulder. The warm blood
followed the barb, and he lapped it eagerly in his hunger. Then, as the
danger swept over him, he gave the trail cry and darted away. Doors
banged open here and there; dogs barked to crack their throats; seal
guns roared out and sent their heavy echoes crashing like thunder among
the hills. Silence fell again over the lodge; and there were left only a
few frightened dogs whose noses had already told them everything, a few
fishermen who watched and listened, and one Indian boy with a long bow
in his hand and an arrow ready on the string, who trailed away with a
little girl at his side trying to puzzle out the track of one wolf that
left a drop of blood here and there on the snow in the scant moonlight.
Far up on the hillside in a little opening of the woods the scattered
pack came together again. At the first uproar, so unbearable to a
silence-loving animal, they had vanished in five different directions;
yet so subtle, so perfect is the instinct which holds a wolf family
together that the old mother had scarcely entered the glade alone and
sat down to wait and listen when the other wolves joined her silently.
Malsunsis, the big cub, scarcely felt his wound at first, for the arrow
had but glanced through the thick skin and flesh, and he had torn it out
without difficulty; but the old he-wolf limped painfully and held up one
fore leg, pierced by a seal shot, as he loped away over the snow.
It was their first rough experience with men, and probably the one
feeling in every shaggy head was of puzzled wonder as to how and why it
had all happened. Hitherto they had avoided men with a certain awe, or
watched them curiously at a distance, trying to understand their
superior ways; and never a hostile feeling for the masters of the woods
had found place in a wolf's breast. Now man had spoken at last; his
voice was a brutal command to be gone, and curiously enough these
powerful big brutes, any one of which could have pulled down a man more
easily than a caribou, never thought of questioning the order.
It was certainly time to follow the caribou--that was probably the one
definite purpose that came upon the wolves, sitting in a silent,
questioning circle in the moonlight, with only the deep snows and the
empty woods around them. For a week they had not touched food; for
thrice that time they had not fed full, and a few days more would leave
them unable to cope with the big caribou, which are always full fed and
strong, thanks to nature's abundance of deer moss on the barrens. So
they started as by a single impulse, and the mother wolf led them
swiftly southward, hour after hour at a tireless pace, till the great
he-wolf weakened and turned aside to nurse his wounded fore leg. The
lop-eared cub drew out of the race at the same time. His own wound now
required the soft massage of his tongue to allay the fever; and besides,
the fear that was born in him, one night long ago, and that had slept
ever since, was now awake again, and for the first time he was afraid to
face the famine and the wilderness alone. So the pack swept on, as if
their feet would never tire, and the two wounded wolves crept into the
scrub and lay down together.
A strange, terrible feeling stole swiftly over the covert, which had
always hitherto been a place of rest and quiet content. The cub was
licking his wound softly when he looked up in sudden alarm, and there
was the great he-wolf looking at him hungrily, with a frightful flare in
his green eyes. The cub moved away startled and tried to soothe his
wound again; but the uncanny feeling was strong upon him still, and when
he turned his head there was the big wolf, which had crept forward till
he could see the cub behind a twisted spruce root, watching him steadily
with the same horrible stare in his unblinking eyes. The hackles rose up
on the cub's neck and a growl rumbled in his deep chest, for he knew now
what it all meant. The smell of blood was in the air, and the old
he-wolf, that had so often shared his kill to save the cubs, was now
going crazy in his awful hunger. Another moment and there would have
been a terrible duel in the scrub; but as the wolves sprang to their
feet and faced each other some deep, unknown feeling stirred within them
and they turned aside. The old wolf threw himself down heavily, facing
away from the temptation, and the cub slipped aside to find another den,
out of sight and smell of the huge leader, lest the scent of blood
should overcome them again and cause them to fly at each other's throats
in uncontrollable fury.
Next morning a queer thing happened, but not uncommon under the
circumstances among wolves and huskies. The cub was lying motionless,
his head on his paws, his eyes wide open, when something stirred near
him. A red squirrel came scampering through the scrub branches just
under the thick coating of snow that filled all their tops. Slowly,
carefully the young wolf gathered his feet under him, tense as a
bowstring. As the squirrel whisked overhead the wolf leaped like a
flash, caught him, and crushed him with a single grip. Then with the
squirrel in his mouth he made his way back to where the big leader was
lying, his head on his paws, his eyes turned aside. Slowly, warily the
cub approached, with a friendly twist of his ears and head, till he laid
the squirrel at the big wolf's very nose, then drew back a step and lay
with paws extended and tail thumping the leaves, watching till the
tidbit was seized ravenously and crushed and bolted in a single
mouthful. Next instant both wolves sprang to their feet and made their
way out of the scrub together.
They took up the trail of the pack where they had left it, and followed
it ten hours, the cub at a swift trot, the old wolf loping along on
three legs. Then a rest, and forward again, slower and slower, night
after day in ever-failing strength, till on the edge of a great barren
they stopped as if struck, trembling all over as the reek of game poured
into their starving nostrils.
Too weak now to kill or to follow the fleet caribou, they lay down in
the snow waiting, their ears cocked, their noses questioning every
breeze for its good news. Left to themselves the trail must end here,
for they could go no farther; but somewhere ahead in the vast silent
barren the cubs were trailing, and somewhere beyond them the old mother
wolf was laying her ambush.--Hark! from a spur of the valley, far below
on their left, rang out the food cry, singing its way in the frosty air
over woods and plains, and hurrying back over the trail to tell those
who had fallen by the way that they were not forgotten. And when they
leaped up, as at an electric shock, and raced for the cry, there were
the cubs and the mother wolf, their hunger already satisfied, and there
in the snow a young bull caribou to save them.
So the long, hard winter passed away, and spring came again with its
abundance. Grouse drummed a welcome in the woods; the _honk_ of wild
geese filled the air with a joyous clangor, and in every open pool the
ducks were quacking. No need now to cling like shadows to the herds of
caribou, and no further need for the pack to hold together. The ties
that held them melted like snows in the sunny hollows. First the old
wolves, then the cubs, one by one drifted away whither the game or their
new mates were calling them. When the summer came there was another den
on the high hill overlooking the harbor, where the little brown cubs
could look down with wonder at the shining sea and the slow
fishing-boats and the children playing on the shore; but the wolves
whose trail began there were far away over the mountains, following
their own ways, waiting for the crisp hunting cry that should bring them
again together.
_Trails that Cross in the Snow_
"Are we lost, little brother?" said Mooka, shivering.
No need of the question, startling and terrible as it was from the lips
of a child astray in the vast solitudes; for a great gale had swooped
down from the Arctic, blotting out in clouds of whirling snow the world
of plain and mountain and forest that, a moment before, had stretched
wide and still before the little hunters' eyes.
For an hour or more, running like startled deer, they had tried to
follow their own snow-shoe trail back over the wide barrens into the
friendly woods; but already the snow had filled it brim full, and
whatever faint trace was left of the long raquettes was caught up by the
gale and whirled away with a howl of exultation. Before them as they ran
every trail of wolf and caribou and snow-shoe, and every distant
landmark, had vanished; the world was but a chaos of mad rolling snow
clouds; and behind them--Their stout little hearts trembled as they saw
not a vestige of the trail they had just made. With the great world
itself, their own little tracks, as fast as they made them, were swept
and blotted out of existence. Like two sparrows that had dropped blinded
and bewildered on the vast plain out of the snow cloud, they huddled
together without one friendly sign to tell them whence they had come or
whither they were going. Worst of all, the instinct of direction, which
often guides an Indian through the still fog or the darkest night,
seemed benumbed by the cold and the tumult; and not even Old Tomah
himself could have told north or south in the blinding storm.
Still they ran on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, heading the
wind as best they could, till Mooka, tripping a second time in a little
hollow where a brook ran deep under the snow, and knowing now that they
were but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel's arm and repeated
her question:
"Are we lost, little brother?"
And Noel, lost and bewildered, but gripping his bow in his fur mitten
and peering here and there, like an old hunter, through the whirling
flakes and rolling gusts to catch some landmark, some lofty crag or low
tree-line that held steady in the mad dance of the world, still made
confident Indian answer:
"Noel not lost; Noel right here. Camp lost, little sister."
"Can we find um, little brother?"
"Oh, yes, we find um. Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now, after
storm."
"But storm last all night, and it's soon dark. Can we rest and not
freeze? Mooka tired and--and frightened, little brother."
"Sartin we rest; build um _commoosie_ and sleep jus' like bear in his
den. Oh, yes, sartin we rest good," said Noel cheerfully.
"And the wolves, little brother?" whispered Mooka, looking back timidly
into the wild waste out of which they had come.
"Never mind hwolves; nothing hunts in storm, little sister. Come on, we
must find um woods now."
For one brief moment the little hunter stood with upturned face, while
Mooka bowed her head silently, and the great storm rolled unheeded over
them. Still holding his long bow he stretched both hands to the sky in
the mute appeal that _Keesuolukh_, the Great Mystery whom we call God,
would understand better than all words. Then turning their backs to the
gale they drifted swiftly away before it, like two wind-blown leaves,
running to keep from freezing, and holding each other's hands tight lest
they separate and be lost by the way.
The second winter had come, sealing up the gloomy land till it rang like
iron at the touch, then covering it deep with snow and polishing its
mute white face with hoar-frost and hail driven onward by the fierce
Arctic gales. An appalling silence rested on plains and mountains. Not a
chirp, not a rustle broke the intense, unnatural stillness. One might
travel all day long without a sight or sound of life; and when the early
twilight came and life stirred shyly from its coverts and snow caves,
the Wood Folk stole out into the bare white world on noiseless,
hesitating feet, as if in presence of the dead.
When the Moon of Famine came, the silence was rudely broken. Before
daylight one morning, when the air was so tense and still that a whisper
set it tinkling like silver bells, the rallying cry of the wolves rolled
down from a mountain top; and the three cubs, that had waited long for
the signal, left their separate trails far away and hurried to join the
old leader.
When the sun rose that morning one who stood on the high ridge of the
Top Gallants, far to the eastward of Harbor Weal, would have seen seven
trails winding down among the rocks and thickets. It needed only a
glance to show that the seven trails, each one as clear-cut and delicate
as that of a prowling fox, were the records of wolves' cautious feet;
and that they were no longer beating the thickets for grouse and
rabbits, but moving swiftly all together for the edges of the vast
barrens where the caribou herds were feeding. Another glance--but here
we must have the cunning eyes of Old Tomah the hunter--would have told
that two of the trails were those of enormous wolves which led the pack;
two others were plainly cubs that had not yet lost the cub trick of
frolicking in the soft snow; while three others were just wolves, big
and powerful brutes that moved as if on steel springs, and that still
held to the old pack because the time had not yet come for them to
scatter finally to their separate ways and head new packs of their own
in the great solitudes.
Out from the woods on the other side of the barren came two snow-shoe
trails, which advanced with short steps and rested lightly on the snow,
as if the makers of the trails were little people whose weight on the
snow-shoes made hardly more impression than the broad pads of Moktaques
the rabbit. They followed stealthily the winding records of a score of
caribou that had wandered like an eddying wind all over the barren,
stopping here and there to paw great holes in the snow for the caribou
moss that covered all the earth beneath. Out at the end of the trail two
Indian children, a girl and a boy, stole along with noiseless steps,
scanning the wide wastes for a cloud of mist--the frozen breath that
hovers over a herd of caribou--or peering keenly into the edges of the
woods for vague white shapes moving like shadows among the trees. So
they moved on swiftly, silently, till the boy stopped with a startled
exclamation, whipped out a long arrow with a barbed steel point, and
laid it ready across his bow. For at his feet was another light trail,
the trail of a wolf pack, that crossed his own, moving straight and
swift across the barren toward the unseen caribou.
Just in front, as the boy stopped, a slight motion broke the even white
surface that stretched away silent and lifeless on every side,--a motion
so faint and natural that Noel's keen eyes, sweeping the plain and the
edges of the distant woods, never noticed it. A vagrant wind, which had
been wandering and moaning all morning as if lost, seemed to stir the
snow and settle to rest again. But now, where the plain seemed most
empty and lifeless, seven great white wolves crouched down in the snow
in a little hollow, their paws extended, their hind legs bent like
powerful springs beneath them, their heads raised cautiously so that
only their ears and eyes showed above the rim of the little hollow where
they hid. So they lay, tense, alert, ready, watching with eager,
inquisitive eyes the two children drawing steadily nearer, the only sign
of life in the whole wide, desolate landscape.
* * * * *
Follow the back trail of the snow-shoes now, while the wolves are
waiting, and it leads you over the great barren into the gloomy spruce
woods; beyond that it crosses two more barrens and stretches of
intervening forest; then up a great hill and down into a valley, where
the lodge lay hidden, buried deep under Newfoundland snows.
Here the fishermen lived, sleeping away the bitter winter. In the late
autumn they had left the fishing village at Harbor Weal, driven out like
the wild ducks by the fierce gales that raged over the whole coast. With
their abundant families and scant provisions they had followed the trail
up the Southwest Brook till it doubled around the mountain and led into
a great silent wood, sheltered on every side by the encircling hills.
Here the tilts were built with double walls, filled in between with
leaves and moss, to help the little stoves that struggled bravely with
the terrible cold; and the roofs were covered over with poles and bark,
or with the brown sails that had once driven the fishing-boats out and
in on the wings of the gale. The high mountains on the west stood
between them and the icy winds that swept down over the sea from the
Labrador and the Arctic wastes; wood in abundance was at their doors,
and the trout-stream that sang all day long under its bridges of snow
and ice was always ready to brim their kettles out of its abundance.
So the new life began pleasantly enough; but as the winter wore away and
provisions grew scarce and game vanished from the coverts, they all felt
the fearful pinch of famine. Every morning now a confused circle of
tracks in the snow showed where the wild prowlers of the woods had come
and sniffed at the very doors of the tilts in their ravening hunger.
Noel's father and Old Tomah were far away, trapping, in the interior;
and to Noel with his snares and his bow and arrows fell the pleasant
task of supplying the family's need when the stock of dried fish melted
away. On this March morning he had started with Mooka at daylight to
cross the mountains to some great barrens where he had found tracks and
knew that a few herds of caribou were still feeding. The sun was dimmed
as it rose, and the sun-dogs gave mute warning of the coming storm; but
the cupboard was empty at home, and even a little hunter thinks first of
the game he is following and lets the storm take care of itself. So they
hurried on unheeding,--Noel with his bow and arrows, Mooka with a little
bag containing a loaf and a few dried caplin,--peering under every brush
pile for the shining eyes of a rabbit, and picking up one big grouse and
a few ptarmigan among the bowlders of a great bare hillside. On the
edges of the great barren under the Top Gallants they found the fresh
tracks of feeding caribou, and were following eagerly when they ran
plump into the wolf trail.
Now by every law of the chase the game belonged to these earlier
hunters; and by every power in their gaunt, famished bodies the wolves
meant to have it. So said the trail. Every stealthy advance in single
file across, the open, every swift rush over the hollows that might hide
them from eyes watching back from the distant woods, showed the wolves'
purpose clear as daylight; and had Noel been wiser he would have read a
warning from the snow and turned aside. But he only drew his longest,
keenest arrow and pressed on more eagerly than before.
The two trails had crossed each other at last. Beginning near together,
one on the mountains, the other by the sea, they had followed their
separate devious ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now
drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the
makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly,
inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them
apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by
the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that
subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild
rangers of the plains, and that still leads a wolf to follow and watch
the doings of men with intense curiosity. Now the trails had met fairly
in the snow, and a few steps more would bring the boy and the wolf face
to face.
* * * * *
Noel was stealing along warily, his arrow ready on the string. Mooka
beside him was watching a faint cloud of mist, the breath of caribou,
that blurred at times the dark tree-line in the distance, when one of
those mysterious warnings that befall the hunter in the far North rested
upon them suddenly like a heavy hand.
I know not what it is,--what lesser pressure of air, to which we respond
like a barometer; or what unknown chords there are within us that sleep
for years in the midst of society and that waken and answer, like an
animal's, to the subtle influence of nature,--but one can never be
watched by an unseen wild animal without feeling it vaguely; and one can
never be so keen on the trail that the storm, before it breaks, will not
whisper a warning to turn back to shelter before it is too late. To Noel
and Mooka, alone on the barrens, the sun was no dimmer than before; the
heavy gray bank of clouds still held sullenly to its place on the
horizon; and no eyes, however keen, would have noticed the tiny dark
spots that centered and glowed upon them over the rim of the little
hollow where the wolves were watching. Nevertheless, a sudden chill fell
upon them both. They stopped abruptly, shivering a bit, drawing closer
together and scanning the waste keenly to know what it all meant.
"_Mitcheegeesookh_, the storm!" said Noel sharply; and without another
word they turned and hurried back on their own trail. In a short half
hour the world would be swallowed up in chaos. To be caught out on the
barrens meant to be lost; and to be lost here without fire and shelter
meant death, swift and sure. So they ran on, hoping to strike the woods
before the blizzard burst upon them.
They were scarcely half-way to shelter when the white flakes began to
whirl around them. With startling, terrible swiftness the familiar world
vanished; the guiding trail was blotted out, and nothing but a wolf's
instinct could have held a straight course in the blinding fury of the
storm. Still they held on bravely, trying in vain to keep their
direction by the eddying winds, till Mooka stumbled twice at the same
hollow over a hidden brook, and they knew they were running blindly in a
circle of death. Frightened at the discovery they turned, as the caribou
do, keeping their backs steadily to the winds, and drifted slowly away
down the long barren.
Hour after hour they struggled on, hand in hand, without a thought of
where they were going. Twice Mooka fell and lay still, but was dragged
to her feet and hurried onward again. The little hunter's own strength
was almost gone, when a low moan rose steadily above the howl and hiss
of the gale. It was the spruce woods, bending their tops to the blast
and groaning at the strain. With a wild whoop Noel plunged forward, and
the next instant they were safe within the woods. All around them the
flakes sifted steadily, silently down into the thick covert, while the
storm passed with a great roar over their heads.
In the lee of a low-branched spruce they stopped again, as though by a
common impulse, while Noel lifted his hands. "Thanks, thanks,
_Keesuolukh_; we can take care of ourselves now," the brave little heart
was singing under the upstretched arms. Then they tumbled into the snow
and lay for a moment utterly relaxed, like two tired animals, in that
brief, delicious rest which follows a terrible struggle with the storm
and cold.