Part 9

Then somewhere, after a little silence, a very welcome sound came through the moonlit woods, the long, familiar cry of a wolf.

“Ah-h-o-o-o-oo, Ah-h-o-o-o-oo,” it wailed through the long dusky corridors of the pines. And the next instant Gray Coat forgot all his troubles and, leaping to his feet, with all his strength he sent back a loud-quavering howl of command and pleading.

“Ah-h-o-o-o-oo!” To his joy, back came an answering cry, followed by a series of short, reassuring calls which sounded like sweetest music to poor, lonely Gray Coat. Each time the calls sounded a trifle nearer, and soon his sharp ears caught the swift sound of a “pat, pat, pat” upon the bedded pine-needles, and through the moonbeams came swiftly a welcome gray shadow. Gray Coat had found a mate. After they had nosed each other over, dog-fashion, and snarled together with snapping jaws, as is the wolf way of introduction, the two gray wolves, last of a great pack which had once roamed through the Canadian forests, trotted off together.

Silver Sides, the young wolf, was not starved looking or shabby of coat as her mate, and instinctively sensing his hunger, she led him to the remains of a deer carcass, and snarling together, they finished it. Then, with all his old, strong courage come back to him, Gray Coat took the lead, as he always had done, and together they ran on and on through the woods. For days and nights the pair traveled, just two fleet gray shadows, slipping through the silent places of the forest; skulking warily, they avoided the man scent, but always keeping together, for, by common consent, they were now making for a strange, new country and fresh hunting grounds.

But in one thing they had erred; instead of striking off farther north into the well-nigh impassable wild forests, where the lumbermen had not entered, and where they might have found plenty of game, and others of their kindred, they were traveling south, each day drawing nearer and nearer civilization, and, if they kept on, they would soon reach the Green Mountain country. Finally they came to the edge of a great swamp; its dense growth of dark balsams and spruces promised them a safe retreat, and surely, in such a wilderness, game would be plentiful once more, for not a trace of man could they detect. Little cottontail rabbits they saw in plenty, but, as time wore on, both the appetites of Gray Coat and his mate demanded wilder fare than mere rabbits. In vain they ranged together over the deer passes; the hunters had frightened away most of the wilder game. So, in desperation, the two wolves each day began to grow bolder and bolder, and even ventured down into the valleys beneath the mountains, forgetting their fear of man; soon they commenced to raid the farmers’ sheep pens, and dragged away young calves to their retreat in the swamp. Then, as they were unmolested, they actually crossed the traveled highways at night, and often sent their long, wailing yells through the forests, until the villagers began to wonder what it all meant, because the wolf cry had not been heard in that section for years and years.

One farmer finally lost so many sheep he sat up nights to watch. And one moonlight night he saw the pair, Gray Coat and Silver Sides, come skulking like shadows from behind the granary. Quickly the farmer blazed away with his old flint-lock rifle, but he had not killed, only wounded one of the wolves and it got away, leaving a bloody trail of footprints behind.

Gray Coat had been hit and so badly lamed in one leg that he just managed to crawl back to the swamp before sunrise, and seeking shelter among the friendly spruces he lay there helplessly licking his wound.

As soon as the farmer realized that wolves were actually prowling around nights, he immediately set to work to trap them. But no trap could he find that would hold a wolf, so he invented a great drop trap, using the strong door of the granary for a fall. He then baited the trap with tempting fresh meat and waited for the wolves to come again.

Down in the swamp Gray Coat, sullen and ugly because of his lame leg, saw Silver Sides go off alone in the moonlight, night after night. He tried to follow her, for pangs of hunger were gnawing him, but his leg remained far too lame and stiff to travel upon, and so with a snarl of baffled rage he watched his mate slip off through the dark pines. Finally one night Gray Coat watched and waited impatiently for her to return. Would she find game, and perhaps bring him back a bone, as she sometimes did? At the mere thought his hunger seemed every instant to become more and more pressing, and the fever of his wound made him mad with thirst. Finally he dragged himself to a water hole, down in between the swamp tussocks, and lapped and lapped the green, scum-covered water. Then crawling wearily back to his retreat beneath a sheltering spruce, he waited and longed for Silver Sides to come back to him. All that night and the next day Gray Coat waited, but in vain; she did not return to him. Again the moon rose over the dark mountains, and filtered down into the swamp, and then, much to his relief, he tried his lame leg and found it stronger and better, so that he managed to spring out and catch an unsuspecting rabbit. Making a hasty meal, for he was so hungry he couldn’t very well do anything else, he then struck off through the thick spruces, following eagerly the trail of his mate.

Once or twice, in his haste, he lost the scent, then he would run hither and thither with little baffled whines, his muzzle close to the ground as he made wide détours, circling ever wider and wider, round in a circle, until he struck the lost trail once more. It led him through devious ways down into the valley, straight to the farmer’s sheep pen. Skulking warily in and out among the buildings, Gray Coat soon struck a keener scent, which led him straight to the trap. Strangely enough, the trap was not set, and as Gray Coat came creeping nearer and nearer, he found the heavy door dropped down. Baffled by this, he began to scratch frantically, digging and tearing around and beneath the trap with his sharp nails at the heavy door, for he certainly thought, by the strong scent, that Silver Sides must be back of the door. He gave little, whimpering, reassuring whines to her as he dug, just to let her know he was there, but received no reply from her. At last when his nails were nearly worn down to the quick, he stopped his furious digging. He was completely baffled; because, if she were back of the dropped door, she would surely have answered him. Then, suddenly, his miserable green eyes chanced to light upon a tuft of familiar looking gray fur; he sniffed at it eagerly. Yes, it surely belonged to his mate. Gray Coat tossed about this bit of fur, playing with it as a kitten does a feather, but he gained no response from the tuft of fur. Next instant he began to act like a crazy creature, racing madly in and out between the barns, for he had all at once caught a fresh, new clue. Following the new scent, it led him out behind a great red barn, and there it ended, for nailed against the barn door his despairing eyes saw and recognized the well-known but empty pelt of Silver Sides, his mate. Its plumy gray brush waved softly back and forth over the red barn door as if sending him greeting.

Gray Coat stood upon his long hind legs and tried to reach it with his snout. In vain; he received no welcoming snap from the empty jaws of the familiar pelt. Then, sitting down upon his lean haunches, Gray Coat lifted his head and sent such a long, wailing cry of despair and loneliness through the night that the farmer awoke and, grabbing his gun, started to hunt for the wolf.

But Gray Coat, having gained no response from the limp pelt upon the barn door, had left the barn-yard before the farmer got there.

Back on a great bare hill he sat, overlooking the now hateful valley, and trying to reason out in wolf fashion what it all meant. Soon, however, he had made up his mind--a time for action had come to Gray Coat; and lifting his head once more to the moon, he gave one last long cry, because of his lost mate. Then swiftly, like a gray shadow, he leaped away--for he had a long road to travel, because this time his instinct headed him in the right way, straight for the North Lands, where he would strike old familiar trails, fresh hunting grounds, and his kindred.

HOW UNK-WUNK THE PORCUPINE MET HIS MATCH

In the thick cover of the spruces, down in a natural hollow, where it was dark and still, and the fragrant boughs swept the ground, forming a perfect little bower, or tent, lived a very interesting family, Father and Mother Porcupine and their three young ones. So very young were the little porcupines, or hedgehogs, as they are sometimes called, that they resembled neither cubs nor kittens, but at first sight looked not unlike homely young crows before the pin-feather age; for when the little hedgehog is born, he is strange looking enough, his quilly armor being covered with a transparent skin; and besides, he is totally deaf and blind, and very helpless.

It did not take long, however, for quills to poke through the skin covering, and then sight came to the small, piggy eyes, and the little ones began to look more like porcupines. One fine day the wanderlust seized Father Porcupine, and off he strolled into the deep woods, and was never seen again. He had deliberately deserted his little family beneath the green tent, which is not at all an uncommon occurrence in hedgehog circles.

The little ones were quite often left alone now to shift for themselves, for their mother also took to wandering, and so one night when she had been gone all day, upon her return she found two of them missing. In the early twilight a stealthy, sinuous stranger had entered her home; just two little protesting squeaks came from beneath the hedgehog tent, and when the weasel left, only Unk-Wunk, the largest of the little ones, was left.

“Unk-Wunk, Unk-Wunk,” grunted the lonely little hedgehog to his mother, as she peered in at him with her little dull eyes through the curtain of balsams, her cold manner showing no emotion whatever, for such is the nature of the hedgehog tribe that they rarely show much feeling over anything, no matter how tragic.

Now Unk-Wunk would never have escaped from the sharp teeth of the sly weasel had not his quills been longer and sharper than his unfortunate brothers. He had heard their terrified squeaks, and when the weasel made for him, he simply backed away, and for the first time in his life made use of his quill armor.

“Unk-Wunk, Unk-Wunk,” he grunted fiercely, while the weasel glared at him savagely with its hateful, little red eyes. The weasel thought to himself, no doubt, what a silly, helpless thing you are to grunt at me so boldly. Who’s afraid of your stupid “Unk-Wunk?” But the weasel soon found out his mistake, and backed out in haste from the hedgehog tent, his sly, pointed snout stuck full of cruel barbs, which it took him days to rub out, and taught him such a lesson that, ever after that, he never cared to cross the track of a hedgehog, and would frequently make a long détour whenever he chanced to spy one along the forest trails.

Unk-Wunk being of a particularly bold, independent nature, his mother soon left him, and went off to live with a colony of hedgehogs who had located their camp on a distant ledge. But somehow Unk-Wunk tarried in the old tent, for he loved the fragrant balsam scent, where overhead, when autumn came, the beech leaves turned golden yellow, and the brown nuts came rattling down in showers to his very door. Besides, just a short stroll away lay the marsh pools, threaded thick with succulent lily roots, considered, by the hedgehog tribe, the very daintiest eating to be had. All this lay close at hand, and as Unk-Wunk was naturally a lazy, indolent fellow, and did not care to hurry, or take unnecessarily long journeys, no wonder the place suited him.

Never, perhaps, had there been such an absolutely fearless hedgehog as young Unk-Wunk, because his first great success in driving off the sly old weasel had taught him the use of his quills, and made him unafraid of anything in the forest, whether it wore fur or feathers. He actually never bothered himself to get out of their very tracks, but would just stand looking very stupid indeed, and stare at them coldly with his little, dull eyes; if they presumed to come too near he would raise his armor and utter threatening grunts at them, so that usually they passed him by.

At twilight, when the old hoot owl, who nested above him in the beech tree, came out upon a limb and began to send out his weird call, and the hermit thrushes called to each other across the marsh-lands, then Unk-Wunk would lazily uncurl himself from an all day snooze, and leisurely stroll off through the silent places of the forest looking for a meal. When it began to grow frosty in the lowlands, and the nights were cooler, he covered longer distances in his raids, and even ventured into the lumber camps, gnawing his way through intervening boards of the shacks and sampling fat bacon, which he found so good that he would travel long distances to taste it. He stole eggs, too, and would manage one so deftly that he rarely spilled a drop of the golden contents, for he had a nice way of cracking a small place in the shell at the top, and inserting his tongue, or small paw, and never losing a morsel, leaving behind him just a pile of empty shells.

Strangely enough, the lumbermen’s yellow hound, when he heard the steady “gnaw, gnaw, gnaw” of Unk-Wunk’s sharp teeth through the shack flooring, would simply raise his head and utter little timorous, muffled whines under his breath, never offering to drive him away; if the truth were known the yellow dog was terribly afraid of Unk-Wunk. He would not hesitate to bay fiercely, chase a fox, coon, or even a bob cat, but once he had returned to camp with his jowls stuck full of Unk-Wunk’s terrible quills, and after that he played the coward whenever he saw a hedgehog.

When you studied Unk-Wunk carefully, you might think him a very stupid, dull-looking animal. But back of his ugly, half-witted skull lay an alert brain, what there was of it. He dearly loved to play a joke, and for sheer sport would roll himself up into a ball and lie stupidly in one of the well-worn trails of the wood people; unsuspectingly, they would creep nearer and nearer the queer looking bundle. Then Unk-Wunk’s dull eyes, peering out at them, perhaps, from beneath his hind leg, would sparkle with malice, and, like a flash, out would fly his tail, which held the very sharpest, most penetrating quills on his body. Then the curious one would usually go squeaking off on a jump, very much wiser than it had been before concerning the hedgehog family.

One autumn evening Unk-Wunk visited the marsh pool; his desire for a feast of lily roots, before the pool froze over, was keen upon him. To his dismay he found the pool already occupied by the blue heron family who were wading about upon their long, stilt-like legs for minnows or crawfish. Unk-Wunk realized well enough that he would be at the mercy of the herons’ long, sword-like beaks once he entered the water, so he just stood behind the shelter of a spruce bush and thought out a plan to get rid of the herons, and have the pool to himself.

Waddling clumsily back into the deep woods, Unk-Wunk found a bed of dry beech leaves, and then deliberately laying himself down among them, he rolled his spiky body back and forth among them until every quill held a leaf; he was completely coated over with dry leaves, so that even his head was concealed. Then he crept warily back toward the pool and suddenly uttering a loud “Unk-Wunk, Unk-Wunk,” he appeared right in plain view of the herons. Ordinarily the sight of a mere stupid hedgehog would never have stirred the wise herons, and they would simply have flown at him, flapping their great wings in his face, and sent him off. But as soon as they caught a glimpse of the strange appearing thing, all covered with leaves, and heard it actually cry out, with shrill, terrified screams they all spread their wings and flew off over the mountain, perfectly panic-stricken at the strange thing they had seen. It did not take the sly Unk-Wunk long to rid himself of the leaves, and plunge into the pool which he now had all to himself.

Now among the kindred of the wild Red-Brush, the Fox, is reckoned as the wisest of the wise. Still, in spite of his reputation for wisdom, he too had once been an easy mark for Unk-Wunk. In his travels Red-Brush was wont to seek his prey in all manner of curious places. He never failed to investigate hollow logs along the trail, for times without number he had run across an apparently vacant log, and discovered it to be occupied by a rabbit or some other easy prey.