Part 13

The five visible squirrels are running in erratic circles, drawing nearer to the strange creature that puzzles and irritates them, till one scurries up my leg almost to my waist, where he loses courage and leaps off, scared but chattering. At this they all scatter and climb different trees, stopping at the level of my eyes, where they jump up and down on the same spot, crying kilch! kilch! as they jump. Then, for they are a rattle-headed folk, they forget curiosity and take to chasing or punishing one poor, squealing wretch who, they think, caused all this ado about nothing.

There is life here, you see, and in the snow at your feet is the record of it, more interesting by far than any book of natural history. So with senses all alert we move onward to the rhythmic swish and click of the snowshoes, mile after lonely mile, now over mighty hardwood ridges that probably never before were marked by a man’s footprints, again pushing through dense evergreen thickets to break out on the silent expanse of a caribou barren, a beaver pond, an unnamed lake; and hardly a rood of all this ground but offers a trail to follow and a story to read. Here is good hunting.

As we follow down a ridge in the late afternoon, we get one shock and meet with the only nerve-testing adventure which this big, lonely wilderness can furnish. There is no game in sight; the woods are still, the snow unmarked by any trail; but we are moving cautiously, lifting the snowshoes so as to avoid all noise. Somewhere on that densely wooded hillside across the valley is a deer yard; our eyes are searching far ahead, trying to pick up a moving shadow, when with startling suddenness comes a rumble, a roar, a violent upheaval of snow, and out from underfoot bursts a whirring, booming thing that scares us stiff. Through the flurry of snow the thing looks like a bomb and sounds like an explosion; but--we laugh at our fright--it is only a bird, a grouse, who is making all that commotion. Seksagadagee, Little Thunder-maker, the Indians call him, and now you know why: he has a thunderclap way of startling you at times, and in the spring his hollow drumming has a suggestion of distant thunder. This one, having eaten his fill of birch buds, had swooped into the snow for the night, as grouse often do before the big owls begin to hunt, and I had put one of the snowshoes fairly over him before seeing the hole he made when he went in.

That hole is scarcely noticeable even now, for no sooner was it made than the falling snow almost filled it again. Beneath it is a tunnel, cloven by the bird’s plunge, which slants downward and makes a sharp turn to the left. At the end is, or was, a little chamber where Seksagadagee intended to sleep warm, out of eyeshot of hunting owls, with a blanket of snow all around him.

There he is now, cuddled against the stem of a big spruce, where he is hard to find. He is motionless, like a knob of the tree, but he is looking back alertly to see what startled him. At sight of his plump breast the thought of food replaces natural history; my revolver comes up in line with his head. He will be a rare bonne bouche, and the wilderness must feed its wanderers--but wait! Grouse are scarce here, as they are at home this year, having gone through a wet breeding season which killed most of the chicks, after enduring a pest of goshawks that came down from the north and harried the old birds all winter. That is why we have crossed but one grouse track to-day, though we have traversed miles of good cover since sunrise.

It seems a pity to take this lonesome fellow. When you kill a bird he is dead, and makes no more trails. “Well, Little Thunder-maker, you and your poults have had a hard enough rub with hawks and foxes, and these big woods seem to need you. Good-by and good luck!” I call, and we break even. But I was more scared than he was. The bomb paralyzed me for a moment, exploding so suddenly; while his booming flight said that he was master of his own motions.

In the valley beyond, just before entering the deer yard, we cross the trail of the wolves we are seeking,--six powerful brutes that keep together at this point, traveling in single file till they reach the hillside with its tangle of deer paths, when they spread out to sweep the cover from end to end. The air was northerly last night; they are hunting upwind after their usual fashion. We must hurry now; it is growing late, and we have one more story to read from the trails, a story which I wish had not been written. Ah, see that!

Yonder are holes in the snow where two deer (probably a doe and her fawn of last spring) rested near one of the paths of their winter yard; and up the path comes a wolf, stealing along like a cat. That fellow is hunting keenly; but though near enough to smell his game under ordinary conditions, the trail shows that he has no inkling of the two animals only a few yards away. They are hidden by the snow a little to one side of his course, which will take him past them if he keeps on as he is going. Fortunately for the deer, they give out very little scent when resting; and since a wolf does not follow foot scent, he must run almost over them before he knows where they are. See, he has passed without smelling them; they will be safe in another minute if they hold still. There! too bad! too bad! The deer have caught the rank wolf smell, and a single whiff stampedes them. As they jump, the wolf catches the body scent and whirls toward them. Two great bounds bring him into their trail; he is after them in a terrific rush.

Poor deer! it is all up with them now; they have no chance with that grim brute at their heels. Luckily he will kill only one, leaving the other, for deer are not like crowding sheep; they scatter when a wolf attacks the herd. But what is this?

A short run, and the wolf leaves the hot trail and speeds to a distant part of the yard, hurling himself forward by extraordinary bounds, as if life depended on getting somewhere else on the instant.

That is just like a wolf. He has room for only one notion or impulse at a time; when a new notion or a stronger impulse comes into his head, it drives out the other. Chasing his game and gaining on it at every jump, this wolf received some new, imperative summons and rushed to answer it. Following him, we find where another wolf joins his headlong rush; others come sweeping in from either side; the whole pack goes leaping alongside a fresh trail left by a running buck and a single big wolf.

We understand now the uproar that shattered last night’s stillness. It was the trail-cry of a wolf, followed by the pack’s terrifying answer. As a rule, wolves hunt in silence; when they run a deer there is seldom a yelp from beginning to end of the chase. Occasionally, however, when a solitary wolf starts big game and wants help, he utters a peculiar cry; and that cry, coming from the mother wolf who leads the pack or from the old dog wolf who hunts by himself, rouses up a wild impulse, electric, irresistible. At the tingling summons every wolf in the pack leaves his own affairs, even the food he has just caught, and darts away to join the hunt. As the scattered brutes draw together, there is confused, uproarious howling. The running game, thinking only of the wolf behind him, hears a threatening clamor on all sides; he wavers, halts, turns, and the chase is over. Such is the psychology of a wolf’s hunting, as one hears it in the night or reads it from the snowy trail next morning.

The buck is heading for the nearest lake, where running is easier and he has the advantage, since his sharp hoofs cling to the ice where the wolves’ feet slip and slither; but the lake is half a mile away, and he will never reach it. I have followed a score of just such trails as this, and whether in woods or on open ice I have not yet found one which said that a buck could keep ahead of these fleet brutes more than a few minutes.

That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping, they refuse (in their hunting, at least) to keep up a fast clip for any length of time; and in witnessing one of their hunts I had the impression that any buck should be able to get away from them. In deep snow he seems to have quite as much speed as they have; on the ice he has more, and he might win in any kind of footing if he would only put his mind into his running. Unhappily, that is precisely what a white-tailed deer will not or cannot do when a wolf is after him. When a caribou sniffs a wolf he racks away at a slashing pace, keeping it up until he is out of danger, and no wolf on earth can catch him in a fair run; but a deer, after a magnificent burst of speed which shows his power, always stops to look around, to stamp, to threaten, to fidget. At times he gives the impression that, in a dazed sort of way, he is puzzling his head to know what the brutes behind him are doing or why they do not go about their own affairs. It is not the wolf’s extra speed, I think, but the deer’s mental paralysis which makes the chase so short. But enough of psychology! Here is a plain trail to follow.

At this point the buck and the big wolf that jumped him are running evenly, one behind the other, with no great exertion on either side. Farther on the buck slows down, his jumps shorten; then the wolf closes in, the buck turns to fight. See, as he turns, how the pack rolls in behind him, cutting off his escape, while the big wolf holds him in front. Though they have the buck at their mercy, the powerful brutes do not spring upon the game at bay, for that is not a wolf’s way; he watches his chance to kill by stealth, as he hunts by stealth. Here are depressions which show where two wolves crouched within easy-springing distance; behind them is a hole where the buck came down from a jump. He must have leaped clean over the crouching wolves as he broke away for the lake.

The trail is marvelously interesting now; it tells of things that happen in the night, things that few human eyes have ever seen. Some of the pack are racing on either side of the buck, while a single big wolf follows jump for jump at his heels. Here the buck is thrown fairly when the following wolf catches a flying foot; but he is up and away with the same motion that rolls him completely over. There is the story in the snow, as plain as English when you know how to read it. Though a few red drops mark the trail, the buck is hardly scratched; the big wolf has not yet had the chance for which he is watching. Again the buck is thrown, and this time he stays down. There he lies, just as he fell! He was not quick enough on his feet the second time, and the big wolf closed his jaws on the small of the back. That is one way of killing, but not the common way when the approach is from behind. The wolf was looking for a different chance, I think, but took this like a flash when he saw it.

We examine the wound carefully, cutting away the skin so as to see more clearly. Only the deep fang-marks show; the flesh is not eaten here, or even torn; yet under the muscles the bones grate like a broken hinge. The wolves eat a little from the hind quarters, and two of them lap a bit at the throat without tearing it. There is only a slight puncture, under which a few red drops are frozen in a hollow lapped by a wolf’s tongue. So far as we can discover, the only serious wound on the body is that broken back, with its mute testimony to the power of a timber wolf’s snap. The trail shows no sign of quarreling when the wolves feed or when they go off, their hunger satisfied, to roam the woods like lazy dogs.

There is a different kind of hunting ahead now, a hunt to save the deer by shooting their enemies; but the short winter day is almost done, and we must wait for the morrow. You will be told that it is vain to follow a wolf in this densely wooded region; that his senses are so much keener than yours that you will never find him by trailing; that your only chance of killing him is to go abroad at all hours and trust to a chance meeting. One can understand such counsel, born of repeated failure, without quite agreeing with it. Only yesterday I found the fresh kill of a wolf pack in the early morning, and before noon I had trailed the brutes to where they were resting for the day under a ledge. The fascinating thing was that they had no notion I was anywhere near them when the first massive gray head rose above the bushes to sniff suspiciously. Such a chase is out of the question to-day; the light fades, and camp is calling.

The snowshoe trail stretches far behind, giving a sense of comfort in these strange woods, because one cannot well be lost with his own snowshoe slots to guide him. But the back trail is weary miles long, and, judging by our course since morning (which was first southerly, you remember, then northeast), the home lake can hardly be more than an hour or so to westward. No need to look at your compass; there’s the sunset. So into the sunset we go, and after the sunset is the twilight, with one great star like a lamp hung over it.

It is dusk, and numberless stars are glittering in the frosty air, when we break out of the gloomy woods near the foot of the lake. As we move campward, more swiftly now over level going, a long howl rolls down from the hills over which our trail has just been drawn. There is a moment of quiet on nature’s part, of tense listening on ours; then the rally cry of the wolves goes shivering through the night.

That pack, or another one, must have been nearer than we thought. Perhaps they saw us as we hurried down the last slope through deepening shadows. No doubt they will soon be sniffing our trail. In the early evening a young wolf is apt to raise a great howl when he runs across the fresh trail of a man; not because he knows what it is, but for precisely the opposite reason. “Will they follow or chase us?” you ask; which shows that you have been reading wolf stories. “No, these big timber wolves never hunt a man,” I answer, and that answer is true. Nevertheless, your stride lengthens; there is a feeling of lightness in your heels; you are a little nervous, and your scalp is tight; wait a bit.

A fallen pine stub offers an inviting seat under the shore, where we sit down to “rest a pipe,” listening alertly to the wolves, trying to gauge their course for the next hunting,--their hunting and mine, for I shall surely follow them at daybreak. Aha! hear that.

An awful row, wailing, ululating, breaks out from the hill above us, where young wolves of the pack are clamoring over our trail. They have found it, all right. One can easily fancy now that they are coming on the jump; but they are not even headed this way, never fear. They are merely puzzled or excited over a new thing. Later, when they grow quiet, some of them may steal down to have a look at us; but they will take good care that we do not have a look at them. Their howling, especially when heard by a solitary man at night, has a strangely disturbing quality, rasping our civilized nerves like sandpaper. If you are not accustomed to the cry, panic and imaginary terrors are bred of it, and all the foolish stories of wolf ferocity you ever heard come crowding back to demand, “Now will you listen to us? Now will you believe?” No, not a bit. Every ferocious wolf story I ever heard (every American story, at least) is an invention absurdly at variance with the wolf’s character. So we finish the pipe, slowly for discipline, and move campward through the witchery of the wilderness night. The wolves have ceased their howling; the world is intensely still.

A ruddy gleam breaks suddenly from the dark bulk of trees; and Bob, hearing the click of snowshoes, comes out from the fire where he has been keeping supper warm for the greater pleasure of sharing it. “Welcome home, b’y! What luck?” he calls; and something in his voice tells me that he, too, has good news, which waits only an occasion for telling. The occasion comes as we eat leisurely, thankfully, before the glowing birch logs; while night gathers close about our little “Commoosie,” and our fire makes the wilderness home.

TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY

In my “Benacadie,” or home camp, one summer was a cow, very much out of focus, that had been led far through the woods, and then, in a lunatic moment, had been rolled into a bateau and rowed across the big lake. That last was a brave adventure, especially when the cow, not knowing why she should be bundled up like a sack, kicked free of the straps, heaved up on wobbly legs, and tried to climb out of the boat; but that is not the comedy.

Not far from “Benacadie,” on the other side of a wooded ridge, was a beaver meadow sparsely overgrown with ash and alder, where the cow was tied out every morning in blue-joint grass up to her eyes. It was fine pasturage, and the cow, being a sensible creature when she was not in a boat, proceeded to make cream of it. Before the season was over she became a pet and, like most pets, something also of a nuisance. She had a genius for freedom and diet; no sooner had she slipped her halter than she would come begging for cake at the kitchen. She would poke her head into open doors at unseemly hours of the night, or moo into open windows at cockcrow in the morning. When she had eaten all she wanted of grass or browse, then her thoughts turned to pastures new, and she would follow any foot-loose man wherever he might be going.

In camp that summer was a cookee and handy man, who had been hired to do whatever anybody else or the cook shied at. It was a loose kind of contract, but Cookee kept his part of it admirably, stopping his whistle to answer our lumberman’s hail of “Cookee here!” and tackling any job with unfailing good humor. Though he got the burnt end of every stick, he believed he was born lucky until the bear chased him; after that he was sure of it. One of his jobs was to mog over to the beaver meadow before sundown, and lead the cow home to her shack for the night. She was a precious old beast, the only one of her kind in the whole region, and because there were bear signs in the woods we were taking no chances. Her owner said she would be worth a hundred dollars if we did not bring her back; and that is a lot of money to put into a bear bait.