Chapter II: Part 2

One Saturday morning (a glorious day it was, with all signs pointing to a good fox run) I went early to the gully, crossed it, and hid where I had a view up or down the stream. Several times during the day I heard hounds in the offing, but the chase did not head in my direction. When the winter sunset came, and an owl began to hoot in the darkening woods, it was time for a hungry boy to go home.

The next time I had better luck. From some hills far away the hoot of hounds came clear and sweet through the still air; then the flat report of a gun, a brief silence, a renewed clamor, and my ears began to tingle as the hunt drew my way, louder and louder. Suddenly there was a flash of ruddy color, warm and brilliant on the snow; the fox appeared on the farther side of the gully, slipped over the edge at a slow trot, and disappeared among the vines.

I was watching the stream keenly when the same flash of color caught my eye, again on the other side, but some fifty yards above where the fox had vanished. He bounded lightly up the steep bank, sprang to the level above, listened a moment to the dogs, ran along the edge a short distance, dropped down into the vines, came up quickly, and scuttled back again in another place. There were fleeting glimpses of orange fur as he dodged here or there, now near the stream, now among the thickest vines; then he tiptoed up and stood alert in the open, at the precise spot, apparently, where he had first entered the gully. After cocking his ears once more at the increasing clamor of hounds, he headed back toward them into the woods; and I had the impression that he was carefully stepping in his own footprints, back-tracking, as many hunted creatures do. So he went, cat-footedly at first, then in swift jumps, till he came to a huge tree that had been twisted off by a gale, leaving a slanting stub some fifteen feet high. Here Eleemos took a flying leap at the stub, scrambled up it with almost the ease of a squirrel, and disappeared into the top.

The hounds were by this time close at hand. A wild burst of music preceded them as they rushed into sight, heads up, giving tongue at every jump, and followed the hot trail headlong over the gully’s edge into the vines. Evidently the fox had run about most liberally there; in a moment the bounds were tangled in a pretty crisscross, lost all sense of direction, and broke out in lamentation. Most of them went threshing about the gully till the delicate fox trail was covered by a maze of dog tracks; but one old fellow, who had been through the same mill before, lay down in an open spot and rolled about on his back, his feet in the air, as if to say, “Well, here’s the end of this chase.” Another veteran with furrowed face and a deep, sad voice (it was Roby again), managed to nose out half the puzzle, for he came creeping up over the edge of the gully at the point where the fox had first leaped out; but there he ran up and down, up and down, finding plenty of fresh scent everywhere without being able to follow it to any end except the empty vines. Another hound, a youngster with a notion in his head that anything which runs must go ahead, plunged into the stream, swam it, and went casting about the woods on the farther side.

Meanwhile there was a stir, the ghost of a motion, in the leaning stub. Over the top of it came two furry ears, then a pointed nose and a bright yellow eye. The fox was there, watching every play of the game with intense interest; and in his cocked ears, his inquisitive nose, his wrinkling eyebrows, were the same lively expressions that you see in the face of a fox when he is hunting mice, and thinks he hears one rustling about in the frozen grass.

PLAYERS IN SABLE

In severe weather, when snow lay deep on the silent fields, a few crows would enter the yard in view of my birds’ table, sitting aloof in trees where they could view the feast, but making no attempt to join it. I did not then know that crows are nest-robbers, like the jay, or that the smallest bird at the table was ready to bristle his feathers if one of the black bandits approached too near.

For several days, while the crows grew pinched, I waited expectantly for hunger to tame them, only to learn that a crow never ventures into a flock of smaller birds, being absurdly afraid of their quickness of wing and temper. Then, because any hungry thing always appealed to me, I spread a variety of food, scraps of meat and the entrails of fish or fowl, on a special table at a distance; but the crows would not go near it, probably thinking it some new device to insnare them. They have waged a long battle with the farmer, and the battle has bred in them a suspicion that not even hunger can heal. As a last resort, I scattered food carelessly on the snow, and within the hour the hungry fellows were eating it. Their first meal was a revelation to me; no gobbling or quarreling, but a stately and courteous affair of very fine manners. Nor have I ever seen a crow do anything to belie that first impression.

Among the scraps was some field corn, dry and hard from the crib; but the canny birds knew too much to swallow the grain whole, ravenous though they were. Green or soft corn they will eat with gusto, but ripened field corn calls for proper treatment. Each crow would take a single kernel (never more than that at one time) to a flat rock on the nearest wall, and there, holding the kernel between the toes of a foot, would strike it a powerful blow with his pointed beak. I used to tremble for his toes, remembering my own experience with hammer or hatchet; but every crow proved himself a good shot. Occasionally a descending beak might glance from the outer edge of a kernel, sending it spinning out from under the crow’s foot; whereupon he hopped nimbly after it and brought it back to the block. After a trial or two he would hit it squarely in the “eye”; it would fly into bits, and he would gather up every morsel before going back for a fresh supply.

Once when a hungry crow splintered a kernel in this way, I saw a piece fly to the feet of another crow, who bent his head to eat it as the owner came running up. The two bandits bumped together; but instead of fighting over the titbit, as I expected, they drew back quickly with a sense of “Oh, excuse me!” in their nodding heads and half-spread wings. Then they went through a little comedy of manners, “After you, my dear Alphonse” or “You first, my dear Gaston,” till they settled the order of precedence in some way of their own, when the owner ate his morsel and went back to the wall to find the rest of the fragments.

Watching these crows, with their sable dress and stately manners, it was hard to imagine them off their dignity; but I soon learned that they are rare comedians, that they spend more time in play or mere fooling than any other wild creature of my acquaintance, excepting only the otters. I have repeatedly watched them play games, somewhat similar in outward appearance to games that boys used to play in country school yards, and once I witnessed what seemed to be a good crow joke. Indeed, so sociable are they, so dependent on one another for amusement, that a solitary crow is a great rarity at any season. Twice have I seen a white crow (an albino), but never a crow living by himself.

The joke, or what looked like a joke, occurred when I was a small boy. I was eating my lunch in a shady spot at the edge of a berry pasture when a young crow appeared silently in a pine tree, only a few yards away. A deformed tree it was, with a splintered top. In the distance a flock of crows were calling idly, and the youngster seemed to cock his ears to listen. Presently he set up a distressed wailing, which the flock answered on the instant. When a flurry of wings leaped into sight above the trees, the youngster dodged into the splintered pine, and remained there while a score of his fellows swept back and forth over him, and then went to search a grove of pines beyond. When they flew back across the berry pasture, and only an occasional _haw_ came from the distance, the young crow came out and set up another wail; and again the flock went clamoring all over the place without finding where he was hidden.

The play ended in an uproar, as such affairs commonly end among the crows; but whether the uproar spelled anger or hilarity would be hard to tell. The youngster had called and hidden several times; each time the flock returned in great excitement, circled over the neighborhood, and straggled back to the place whence they had come. Then one crow must have hidden and watched, I think, for he came with a rush behind the youngster, and caught him in the midst of his wailing. A sharp signal brought the flock straight to the spot, and with riotous _haw-hawing_ they chased the joker out of sight and hearing.

It was this little comedy which taught me how easily crows can be called, and I began to have no end of fun with them. In the spring when they were mating, or in autumn when immense flocks gathered in preparation for sending the greater part of their number to the seacoast for winter, I had only to hide and imitate the distressed call I had heard, and presto! a flock of excited crows would be clamoring over my head. Yet I noticed this peculiarity: at times every crow within hearing would come to my first summons; while at other times they would bide in their trees or hold steadily on their way, answering my call, but paying no further attention to it. I mark that crows still act in the same puzzling way, now coming instantly, again holding aloof; but what causes one or the other action, aside from mere curiosity, I have never learned. In the northern wilderness, where crows are comparatively scarce, it is almost impossible to call them at any season. They live there in small family groups, each holding its own bit of territory; and apparently they know each voice so perfectly that they recognize my imposture on the instant.

Whenever the “civilized” crows found me, after hearing my invitation, they rarely seemed to associate me with the crow talk they had just heard; for they would go searching elsewhere, and would readily come to my call in another part of the wood. If I were well concealed, and they found nothing to account for the disturbance, most of the flock would go about their affairs; but some were almost sure to wait near at hand for hours, apparently standing guard over the place where I had been calling.

Once at midday I called a large flock to a thicket of scrub pine, and resolved to see the end of the adventure. Though they circled over me again and again, they learned nothing; for I kept well hidden, and a crow will not enter thick scrub where he cannot use his wings freely. Late in the afternoon it set in to rain, and I thought that the crows were all gone away, since they paid no more attention to my calling; but the first thing I saw when my head came out of the scrub was a solitary crow on guard. He was on the tip of a hickory tree, hunched up in the rain, and he gave one derisive _haw_ as I appeared. From behind came an answering _haw_, and I had a glimpse of another crow that had evidently been keeping watch over the other side of the thicket.

Next I discovered that my dignified crows are always ready for fun at the expense of other birds or beasts, and especially do they make holiday of an owl whenever they have the luck to find one asleep for the day. To wake him up, berate him, and follow him with peace-shattering clamor from one retreat to another, seems to furnish them unfailing entertainment. I have watched them many times when they were pestering an owl or a hawk or a running fox, and once I saw them square themselves for all the indignity they had suffered at the beaks of little birds by paying it back with interest to a bald eagle. These last were certainly making a picnic of their rare occasion; never again have I seen crows so crazily happy, or a free eagle so helpless and so furious.

It was on the shore of a river, near the sea, in midwinter. The eagle may have come down to earth after a dead fish, unmindful of crows that were ranging about; but I think it more likely that they had cornered him in an unguarded moment, as they are themselves often cornered by sparrows or robins. Have you seen a crowd of small birds chivvy a crow that they catch in the open, whirling about his slow flight till they drive him to cover and sit around him, scolding him violently for all the nests he has robbed; while he cowers in the middle of the angry circle, very uncomfortable where he is, but afraid to move lest he bring another tempest around his ears? That is how the lordly eagle now stood on the open shore, twisting his head uneasily, his eyes flashing impotent fury. Around him in a jubilant circle were half-a-hundred crows, some watchfully silent, some jeering; and behind him on a rock perched one glossy old bandit, his head cocked for trouble, his eye shining. “Oh, if I could only grip some of you!” said the eagle. “If I could only get these” (working his great claws) “into your black hides! If I could once get aloft, where I could use my--”

He crouched suddenly and sprang, his broad wings threshing heavily. “Haw! haw! To him, my bullies!” yelled the old crow on the rock, hurling himself into the air, shooting over the eagle and ripping a white feather from the royal neck. In a flash the whole rabble was over and around the laboring lord of the air, pecking at his head, interfering with his flight, making a din to crack his ears. He stood it for a turbulent moment, then dropped, and the jeering circle closed around him instantly. He was a thousand times more powerful, more dangerous than any crow; but they were smaller and quicker than he, and they knew it, and he knew it. That was the comedy of what might have been imagined a tragical situation.

Twice, while I watched, the eagle tried to escape, and twice the crows chivvied him down to earth, the only place where he is impotent. Then he gave up all thought of the blue sky and freedom, standing majestically on his dignity, his eyes half closed, as if the sight of such puny babblers wearied him. But under the narrowed lids was a fierce gleam that kept his tormentors at a safe distance. Then a man with a gun blundered upon the stage, and spoiled the play.

One day, as I watched a crowd of crows yelling themselves hoarse over an owl, an idea fell upon me with the freshness, the delight of inspiration. In the barn was a dilapidated stuffed owl, once known in the house as Bunsby, which had been gathering dust for many seasons. Somehow, for some occult reason, people never throw a stuffed bird on the rubbish heap, where it belongs; when they can stand its ugliness no longer, they store it away in barn or attic till they can give it as a precious thing to some beaming naturalist. Bunsby was in this unappreciated stage when I rescued him. With some filched hairpins I poked him together, so as to make him more presentable; gave him a glass eye, the only one I could find, and sewed up the other in a grotesque wink. Then I perched him in the woods, where the crows, coming blithely to my call, proceeded to give him a hazing.

Thereafter, when I heard crows playing, I sometimes used Bunsby to raise a terrible pother among them. By twos or threes they would come streaming in from all directions till the trees were full of them, all vociferating at once, hurling advice at one another or insults at the solemn caricature. Once a more venturesome crow struck a blow with his wing as he shot past (an accident, I think), which knocked Bunsby from his upright balance and dignity. He was an absurd figure at any time, and now with one wing flapping and one foot in the air he was clean ridiculous; but the crows evidently thought they had him groggy at last, and let loose a tumult of whooping.

Another day, when some clamoring crows would pay no attention to my call, I stole through the woods in their direction till I reached the edge of an upland pasture, where a score of the birds were deeply intent on some affair of their own. On the ground, holding the center of the stage, was a small crow that either could not or would not fly, and was acting very queerly. At times he would stand drooping, while a circle of crows waited for his next move in profound silence. After keeping them expectant awhile, he would stretch his neck and say, _ker-aw! kerrrr-aw!_ an odd call, like the cry of a rooster when he spies a hawk, such as I had never before heard from a crow. Instantly from the waiting circle a crow would step briskly up to the invalid, if such he was, and feel him all over, rubbing a beak down from shoulder to tail and going around to repeat on the other side. This rubbing, or whatever it was, would last several seconds, while not a sound was heard; then the investigator would fly to a cedar bush and begin a violent harangue, bobbing his head and striking the branches as he talked. The other crows would apparently listen, then break out in what seemed noisy approval or opposition, and fly wildly about the field. After circling for a time, their tongues clamorous, they would gather around the odd one on the ground, hush their jabber, and the silent play or investigation would begin all over again.

Whether this were another comedy or something deeper I cannot say. Crows do not act in this noisy, aimless way when they find a wounded member of the flock. I have watched them when they gathered to a wing-broken or dying crow, and while some perched silent in the trees a few others were beside the stricken one, seemingly trying to find out what he wanted. An element of play is suggested by the fact that, when I showed myself, the small crow on the ground flew away with the others. Moreover, I have repeatedly seen crows go through a somewhat similar performance, with alternate silence and yelling, when they were listening to a performer, as I judge, who was clucking or barking or making some other sound that crows ordinarily cannot make. As you may learn by keeping tame crows, a few of these sable comedians have ability to imitate other birds or beasts. I have heard from them, early and late, a variety of calls from a deep whistle to a gruff bark, and have noticed that, when one of the mimics chances to display his gift in the woods, he has what appears to be a circle of applauding crows close about him.

On the other hand, I once saw a pack of wolves on the ice of a northern lake acting in a way which strongly reminded me of the crows in the upland pasture; and these wolves were certainly not playing or fooling. One of the pack had just been hit by a bullet, which came at long range from a hidden rifle, against a wind that blew all sound of the report away, and the wounded brute did not know what was suddenly the matter with him. When he was silent, the other wolves would watch or follow him in silence. When he raised his head to whine, as he several times did, instantly a wolf or two would come close to nose him all over, and then all the wolves would run about with muzzles lifted to the sky in wild howling.

WOLVES AND WOLF TALES

There must be something in a wolf which appeals powerfully to the imagination; otherwise there would be no proper wolf stories. You shall understand that “something” if ever you are alone in the winter woods at night, and suddenly from the trail behind you comes a wolf outcry, savage and exultant. There is really no more danger in such a cry than in the clamor of dogs that bay the moon; but, whether it be due to the shadow-filled woods or the remembrance of old nursery tales or the terrible voice of the beast, no sooner does that fierce howling shake your ears than your imagination stirs wildly, your heels also, unless you put a brake on them.

Therefore it befalls, whenever I venture to say, that wolves do not chase men, that some fellow appears with a story to contradict me. Indeed, I contradict myself after a fashion, for I was once rushed by a pack of timber wolves; but that was pure comedy in the end, while the man with a wolf tale always makes a near-tragedy of it. Like this, from a friend who once escaped by the skin of his teeth from a wolf pack:

“It happened out in Minnesota one winter, when I was a boy. The season was fearfully bitter, and the cold had brought down from the north a pest of wolves, big, savage brutes that killed the settlers’ stock whenever they had a chance. We often heard them at night, and it was hard to say whether we were more scared when we heard them howling through the woods or when we didn’t hear them, but knew they were about. Nobody ventured far from the house after dark that winter, I can tell you; not unless he had to.”

Here, though I am following my friend intently, I must jot down a mental note that all good wolf stories are born of just such an atmosphere. They are like trout eggs, which hatch only in chilly water. But let the tale go on:

“Well, father and I were delayed by a broken sled one afternoon, and it was getting dusky when we started on our way home. And a mighty lonely way it was, with nothing but woods, snow, frozen ponds, and one deserted shack on the ten-mile road. This winter road ran five or six miles through solid forest; then to save rough going it cut across a lake and through a smaller patch of woods, coming out by the clearing where our farm was. I remember vividly the night, so still, so moonlit, so killing-cold. I can hear the sled runners squealing in the snow, and see the horses’ breath in spurts of white rime.

“We came through the first woods all right, hurrying as much as we dared with a light load, and were slipping easily over the ice of the lake when--_Woooo!_ a wolf howled like a lost soul in the woods behind us. I pricked up my ears at that; so did the horses; but before we could catch breath there came an uproar that bristled the hair under our caps. It sounded as if a hundred wolves were yelling all at once; they were right on our trail, and they were coming.

“Father gave just one look behind; then he lashed the horses. They were nervous, and they jumped in the traces, jerking the sled along at a gallop. Only speed and marvelous good luck kept us from upsetting; for there was no pole to steady the sled, only tugs and loose chains, and it slithered over the bare spots like a mad thing. Flying lumps of ice from the horses’ hoofs blinded or half stunned us; all the while we could hear a devilish uproar coming nearer and nearer.

“That rush over the ice was hair-raising enough, but worse was waiting for us on the rough trail. We were dreading it; at least I was, for I knew the horses could never keep up the pace, when we hit the shore of the lake, and hit it foul. The sled jumped in the air and came bang-up against a stump, splintering a runner. I was pitched off on my head; but father flew out like a cat and landed at the horses’ bridles. He had his hands full, too. Before I was on my feet I heard him shouting, ‘Where are you, son? Unhitch! unhitch!’ Almost as quick as I can tell it we had freed the horses, leaped for their backs, and started up the road on the dead run. I was ahead, father pounding along behind, and behind him the howling.

“So we tore out of the woods into the clearing, smashed through the bars, and reached the barn all blowing. There I slid off to swing the door open; but I didn’t have sense enough left to get out of the way of it. My horse was crazy with fright; hardly had I started the door when he bolted against it and knocked me flat. At his heels came father on the jump, and whisked through the doorway, thinking me safe inside. That is the moment which comes back to me most keenly, the moment when he disappeared, and my heart went down with a horrible sinking. The thought of being left out there alone fairly paralyzed me for a moment; then I yelled like a loon, and father came out faster than he went in. He picked me up like a sack, ran into the barn, and slammed the door to. ‘Safe, boy, safe!’ was all he said; but his voice had a queer crack when he said it.

“Then we realized, all of a sudden, that the wolves had quit their howling. Inside the barn we could hear the horses wheezing; outside, the world and everything in it was dead-still. Somehow that awful stillness scared us worse than the noise; we could feel the brutes coming at us from all sides. After watching through a window and listening at cracks for a while, we made a break for the house, and got there before the wolves could catch us.”

I have given only the outline and atmosphere of this wolf story, and it is really too bad to spoil it so; for as my friend tells it, with vivid or picturesque detail, it is very thrilling and all true so far as it goes. After showing my appreciation by letting the tale soak into me, I venture to ask, “Did you _see_ any wolves that night?”

“No,” he says, frankly, “I didn’t, and I didn’t want to. The howling was plenty for me.”

And there you have it, a right good wolf story with everything properly in it except the wolves. There were no wolf tracks about the sled when father and son went back with guns in hand next morning; but there were numerous fresh signs in the distant woods, and these with the howling were enough to convince any reasonable imagination that only the speed of two good horses saved two good men from death or mutilation.

Another friend of mine, a mining engineer in Alaska, is also quite sure that wolves may be dangerous, and in support of this opinion he quotes a personal experience. He went astray in a snowstorm one fall afternoon, and it was growing dark when he sighted a familiar ridge, beyond which was his camp. He was hurrying along silently, as a man goes after nightfall, and had reached a natural opening with evergreens standing thickly all about, when a terrific howling of wolves broke out on a hillside behind him.

The sudden clamor scared him stiff. He listened a moment, his heart thumping as he remembered all the wolf stories he had ever heard; then he started to run, but stopped to listen again. The howling changed to an eager whimper; it came rapidly on, and thinking himself as good as a dead man he jumped for a spruce, and climbed it almost to the top. Hardly was he hidden when a pack of wolves, dark and terrible looking, swept into the open and ran all over it with their noses out, sniffing, sniffing. Suspicion was in every movement, and to the watcher in the tree the suspicion seemed to point mostly in his direction.

Presently a wolf yelped, and began scratching at a pile of litter on the edge of a thicket. The pack joined him at his digging, dragged out a carcass of some kind from where they had covered it, ate what they wanted, and slipped away into the woods. But once, at some vague alarm, they all stopped eating while two of the largest wolves came slowly across the opening, heads up and muzzles working, like pointers with the scent of game in their nose. And then my friend thought surely that his last night on earth had come, that the ferocious brutes would discover him and hold him on his perch till he fell from cold or exhaustion. Which shows that he, too, gets his notions of a wolf from the story books.

By northern camp fires I have listened to many other wolf tales; but these two seem to me the most typical, having one element of undoubted truth, and another of unbridled imagination. That wolves howl at night with a clamor that is startling to an unhoused man; that when pinched by hunger they grow bold, like other beasts; that they have a little of the dog’s curiosity, and much of the dog’s tendency to run after anything that runs away,--all that is natural and wolflike; but that they will ever chase a man, knowing that he is a man, seems very doubtful to one who had always found the wolf to be as wary as any eagle, and even more difficult of approach. In a word, one’s experience of the natural wolf is sure to run counter to all the wolf stories.

For example, if you surprise a pack of wolves (rarely do they let themselves be seen, night or day), they vanish slyly or haltingly or in a headlong rush, according to the fashion of your approach; but if ever they surprise you in a quiet moment, you have a rare chance to see a fascinating bit of animal nature. The older wolves, after one keen look, pass on as if you did not exist, and pretend to be indifferent so long as you are in sight; after which they run like a scared bear for a mile or two, as you may learn by following their tracks. Meanwhile some young wolf is almost sure to take the part that a fox plays in similar circumstances. He studies you intently, puzzled by your quietness, till he thinks he is mistaken or has the wrong angle on you; then he disappears, and you are wondering where he has gone when his nose is pushed cautiously from behind a bush. Learning nothing there he draws back, and now you must not move or even turn your head while he goes to have a look at you from the rear. When you see him again he will be on the other flank; for he will not leave this interesting new thing till he has nosed it out from all sides. And to frighten him at such a time, or to let him frighten you, is to miss all that is worth seeing.

Again, our northern wolf is like a dog in that he has many idle moments when he wishes something would happen, and in such moments he would rather have a bit of excitement than a bellyful of meat. During the winter he lives with his pack, as a rule, following a simple and fairly regular routine. At dusk the wolves stir themselves, and often howl a bit; then they hunt and eat their one daily meal, after which they roam idly over a wide territory, nosing into all sorts of places, but holding a general direction toward their next hunting ground; for they rarely harry the same covert two nights in succession. Before sunrise they have settled on a good place to rest for the day; and it has happened, on the few occasions when I have had time or breath enough to trail wolves to their day bed, that I have always found them in a sightly spot, where they could look down on a lake or a wide stretch of country.

If from such a place of rest and observation the wolves see you passing through their solitude, some of them are apt to follow you at a distance, keeping carefully out of sight, till they find out who you are or what you are doing. Should you pass near their day bed without being seen or heard, they will surely discover that fact when they begin to hunt at nightfall; and then a wolf, a young wolf especially, will raise a great howl when he runs across your snowshoe trail; not a savage or ferocious howl, so far as I can understand it, but a howl with wonder in it, and also some excitement. It is as if the wolf that found the trail were saying, “Come hither, all noses! Here’s something new, something that you or I never smelled before. Woooo-ow-ow-ow! what’s all this now?” And if the pack be made up mostly of young wolves, you shall hear a wild chorus as they debate the matter of the trail you have just left behind you.

Such an impression, of harmless animal excitement rather than of ferocity, must surely be strengthened when you follow it up confidently with an open mind. If instead of running away when you hear wolves on your trail you steal back to meet them, the situation and the consequent story will change completely. In some subtle way the brutes seem to read your intention before you come within sight of them. They may be ready to investigate you, but have no notion of being themselves investigated; they melt away like shadows among deeper shadows, and you are at a loss to know where they are even while their keen noses are telling them all about you.

The European wolf, if one may judge him by a slight acquaintance, is essentially like our timber wolf; but his natural timidity has been modified by frequent famines, and especially by dwelling near unarmed peasant folk who are mortally afraid of him. In the summer he lives shyly in the solitudes, where he finds enough mice, grubs, and such small deer to satisfy his appetite. In winter he is always hungry, and when hunger approaches the starvation point he descends from his stronghold to raid the farms. A very little of his raiding starts a veritable reign of terror; every man, woman or child whom he meets runs away, and presently he becomes bold or even dangerous. At least, I can fancy him to be dangerous, having been in an Italian village when a severe winter brought wolves down from the mountains, and when terrified villagers related specific and horrible instances of wolf ferocity. Whenever I searched for the brutes the natives would advise or implore me not to venture into the forest alone. The rural guards kept themselves carefully housed at night, and a single guard, though armed with a rifle, would not enter the woods or cross open country even by daylight for fear of meeting the wolf pack.

It was hard for a stranger to decide whether such terrors came from bitter experience, or whether, like our own fear of the wolf, they were the product of a lively imagination; but one was soon forced to the conclusion that where was so much smoke there must be some fire also. Moreover, as evidence of the fire, I found some official records which indicate that the European wolf may be so crazed by hunger as to kill and eat human beings. Such records inevitably pass into fireside tales, repeated, enlarged, embellished, and thereafter the wolf’s character is blackened forever. He is naturally a timid beast; but his one evil deed, done in a moment of hunger, becomes typical of a ferocious disposition. For, say what you will, the common man’s most lasting impressions of the world are not reasonable, but imaginative; they come not from observation, but from tales heard in childhood. That is perhaps the reason why Indians, in dealing with their children, always represent nature and nature’s beasts as peaceable and friendly.

Our pioneers brought many harrowing wolf tales with them to the New World, and promptly applied them to the timber wolf, a more powerful beast than his European relative, but wholly guiltless, I think, of the charge of eating human flesh even in a season of famine. Neither in our own country nor in Canada, so far as I can learn by searching, is there a single trustworthy record to indicate that our wolves have ever killed a man. Yet the tale is against them, and the consequence is, when a belated traveler hears a clamor in the darkening woods, that ferocity gets into his imagination and terror into his heels; he starts on a hatless run for shelter, and appears with another blood-curdling story of escape from a ravening pack of wolves.

In all such stories certain traits appear to betray a common and romantic origin. Thus, the imaginary pack always terrifies you by reason of its numbers; scores of grim shapes flit through shadowy woods or draw a circle of green eyes to flash back the firelight. The real pack is invariably small, since it consists of a single wolf family. The mother wolf leads; the dog wolf is in the same neighborhood, but commonly hunts by himself; with the mother go her last litter of cubs and a few grown wolves of a former litter that have not yet found their mates. From five to eight wolves make the ordinary pack. Where game is plentiful (leading to large wolf families) ten or twelve may occasionally follow the mother; but such a large pack is exceptional, even in winter. In the subarctic region, where uncounted caribou move north in spring or south in autumn, several different packs hang about the flanks of the migrating herds; but never at such times do the wolves unite or mass, and being well fed with the best of venison they are uncommonly peaceable.

Another romantic trait of the terrible packs of the tale is that they always howl when they charge home. It is one of the marked characteristics of the real wolf that he is silent when stalking or running down game of any kind. His howling has nothing to do with his hunting, being reserved for social or other occasions; he wastes no breath in noise, as hounds do, when he means to overtake anything. Indeed, one of the most uncanny qualities of a wolf is the fleet, soundless, mysterious way he has of appearing where he is least expected. In the northern wilderness this is the typical way of it:

You are swinging along campward, following your lonely snowshoe trail over ice-locked waters, through snow-filled woods, when there comes a vague change or chill in the air. It is the moment when we say that night is falling, when gray shadows rise from the lake to meet other shadows flowing down from the hills; and that is the moment when you can count most surely on hearing the first howl of a stirring wolf. It is a creepy sound in such a place or moment, especially when it is followed by the clamor of a pack, a cry that carries far over the silent places, and that may come from the hills on either side or from the trail behind you. However far away it may be, there is always a menace in the wolf’s challenge; your nerves tingle as you stop to listen.

If you believe your imagination now, the fierce outcry grows louder, sweeps nearer; but if you trust your ears, you will know that it remains stationary, dying away where it began. Those noisy brutes are only proclaiming their ego, like awakened dogs; and having marked their direction you move homeward again, noting the increasing tension of the brief winter twilight, so different from the summer gloaming with its velvet shadows, its thrush song, its lingering light. Presently you have lost all thought of the distant wolves; if you remember them at all, you are thinking of the morrow’s hunt, how you will go back and search out their trail, when suddenly and most startlingly--there they are! And always the disturbing part of such a meeting is this: the wolves are behind you, in front of you, and on either side, before you have the first inkling that they are anywhere near.

So open is the forest here, and so white the snow, that you fancied a rabbit could hardly move without betraying himself to your eyes; yet without noise or shadow of motion surely that is a wolf watching you over a fallen log, where you can see only his eyes and his cocked ears. On the other side of the trail a bush quivers as a wolf creeps under it, but you catch no sure glimpse of him. Look behind you, and a gray something vanishes; then the woods are motionless again. And that is all you will see or hear of your ferocious wolf pack, unless, perchance, you run away; in which event some cub-wolf that knows no better may take a jump or two after you.

These timber wolves of the north are immensely interesting brutes, tireless, powerful, unbelievably cunning. To follow their trail is to have increasing respect for their keenness, their vim, their hair-trigger way of meeting any emergency. Once when I was tracking a solitary dog wolf, an uncommonly big brute, and lazy after eating his fill of venison, I came out of the woods to a frozen lake, and saw him ambling along near shore a few hundred yards ahead of me. He happened to be passing under an icy ledge, utterly unsuspicious of man or danger, when a bullet struck the ice, _ping!_ at his heels.

That was a range shot, a bit shy, and I expected him to give me another chance; but he never even looked around to see where the _ping_ or the _bang_ came from. Almost, it seemed, before the report could reach him he had tried the ledge twice, only to find it overhigh for a standing jump and too slippery to climb. Without an instant’s hesitation he darted out on the lake for a flying start, whirled to the right-about, came at the ledge, and went superbly over it into thick cover. The ledge was over eight feet in the rise, and from the foot of it to his take-off was another ten feet; but in a flash he had measured his leap and taken it rather than expose himself any longer in the open.

Another time I saw a single wolf throw and kill a buck, a matter which called for skill as well as strength, and he did it so easily that one was left wondering what chance a man would have with a few brutes of that kind rolling in upon him. In numbers or when made reckless by hunger our timber wolves might well prove terrible enemies; but the simple fact is that they have no desire to meet a man. They are afraid of him, and avoid him even when they are hungry. Again and again, when wolves have howled about my winter camp at night, I have gone out and given them opportunity for a man hunt; but though they are much bolder by night than by day, they have never, save in one peculiar instance, shown any evidence of a hostile or dangerous disposition. And then they scared me properly, making me know how a man might feel if he were running with a pack of wolves at his heels.

The startling exception came one winter afternoon as I was crossing a frozen lake in a snowstorm. It was almost dusk when I came out of the woods, hurrying because I had far to go, and started fair across the middle of the lake. Soon the wind was blowing the snowflakes in level lines; what with snow and darkened air it became difficult to keep one’s bearings, and in order to see my way better I edged in nearer and nearer to the weather shore.

Two or three times, as I headed steadily up the lake, I had a vague impression that something moved in the woods, and moved so as to keep abreast of me; but the flying flakes interfered with clear vision till I began to come under the lee of a point of evergreens. Then I surely saw a creeping motion among the trees on my left, and stopped dead in my tracks to watch it. The next instant the underbrush was ripped open in a dozen places, and a pack of wolves rushed out. One turned and loped swiftly between me and the point ahead; another that I dared not watch sped down the lake, at a broad angle from the course of the first; the rest spread into a fan-shaped formation that broadened swiftly and must soon spring its ends together like a trap. In a twinkling every avenue of escape to the woods was shut by a wolf; there was left only a fight or a straightaway run across the ice.

The wolves were perhaps a hundred yards distant when they broke cover. They came on easily, their heads low, some with a curious sidling motion that presented a rough shoulder till the fangs had a chance to snap. The brutes uttered no cry, not a howl of any kind. They had been upwind from me when I came out of the woods, and I think now that they mistook me in the storm for a deer or some other game animal; but at the moment their rush looked dangerous, and their grim silence was more terrifying than any clamor. Bending down, I threw off the snowshoe straps for free footing and, as I straightened up, pulled a heavy revolver from its sheath. Then I stood stock-still, which is the most surprising thing you can do to any charging wild beast. He is so accustomed to running away from danger himself, and to seeing other beasts run away from it, that a motionless figure puzzles him, makes him suspect that there must be a mistake somewhere.

From one end of the charging line a big wolf suddenly shot out at top speed, circling to get behind me. I picked him as the one I must first kill; but I would wait till the last moment for two reasons: because shooting must be straight, there being only half as many bullets as there were wolves; and because here was the chance of a lifetime to learn whether a wolf, knowing what he was doing, would ever run into a man. The mental process is slow and orderly now, but then it came and went with a snowflake that swept before my eyes.

As the big wolf whirled in on the run, still some forty yards away, the wind came fair from me to him; he got his first whiff of the man scent, and with it a terrible shock, I think, since its effect was a contortion which looked as if it might dislocate the brute’s back. At the top of a jump he tried to check himself by a violent wriggle. Down he came, his legs stiff as bars, and slid to his toes and leaped straight up again with a wild yelp, as if I had shot him. Yet up to that moment, when his nose told him what game he was running, I had not stirred a muscle.

That single yelp stopped the rush as if by magic. Most of the pack scattered on the instant; but two or three younger wolves that did not understand their blunder hesitated a bit, with surprise written all over them. Then they, too, caught the alarm, and the whole pack went speeding for cover in immense bounds, which grew convulsive when I began to play my part in the comedy. At the shot every flying brute went up in the air, as if safety lay only in the clouds or on the other side of the mountain.

Such are the real wolves. I see them yet, the snow powdering their grizzled coats, streaking away like flushed quail and vanishing with one last tremendous jump into the dusky woods, whenever I hear a good wolf story.

EARS FOR HEARING

One night in June I heard a new bird note, wonderfully clear and sweet, but so dreamlike that it seemed some tiny creature had blown a flute from elfland. The note came from far away, apparently; but I traced it at last to a branch just over my head, where a pair of grosbeaks had built their nest. There the male bird was singing near his brooding mate, singing in his dreams, I think, for his song was like no other that I ever heard from him.

The surprise of that dream song returned to me at dawn, one winter morning, when I heard low, eager voices outside my “Commoosie,” and crept out to find a family of partridges under the birds’ table.

Now a mother partridge has many notes, from the sibilant squeal of anger to the deep _kroo-kroo_ that calls the chicks from hiding; but these voices were quite different from all grouse sounds with which I had grown familiar in the woods. They had what one might call an intimate quality, musical, softly modulated, marvelously expressive. When the partridges were gone, gliding away as if they had not meant to be overheard, I spread the table abundantly, as usual; and that day hardly a bird came without giving me at least one new note, perhaps because I was for the first time really listening.

From that time forth the voices of these feeding birds were a revelation to me, as I heard them close at hand. Surprise, confidence, pleasure, resentment, hunger, loneliness, alarm,--a dozen different emotions seemed to find ready expression, either in varied cries or by modulations of a single note. In making mental register of this bird “talk,” I became convinced that the ear needs more training than the eye if one is to understand the wood folk or enter into the spirit of their little comedy. Even if you turn mere ornithologist, with an interest in feathers or species rather than in birds, hearing is a better or surer sense than sight if you would name birds without the needless barbarity of killing them for identification. Once you recognize the peculiar quality of any bird’s voice, you may surely name him at any season. He may change his plumage as he will, for youth or age, for spring or winter; but he cannot change his natural voice, and, like Peter’s, his speech bewrayeth him.

One morning, in that same winter camp where the grouse appeared, a woodpecker sent a long call rattling across the frozen lake. The first subtle feeling of spring was in the air. Deep under snow the sap began to well upward from roots of the sugar maples to express itself in coloring buds; and I fancy that something stirred upward from some root of being in the woodpecker, also, to find expression in lusty drumming. Ever since we made camp we had heard him or his fellows signaling, answering, drilling their food out of frost-bound wood; but this call was entirely different, and Bob’s keen ears were instantly turned to it.

“Aha! that chap wants something. Can ye answer him now?” he said; and in his eye was a challenge.