Northern Trails, Book I. | Page 5

from crag to crag. Instantly the huskies answered, every clog breaking
out into indescribable frenzied wailings, as a collie responds in agony
to certain chords of music that stir all the old wolf nature sleeping
within him. For five minutes the uproar was appalling; then it ceased
abruptly and the huskies ran wildly here and there among the rocks.
From far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may
be, the cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep.
Then silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land
like a winding-sheet.
As the unknown howl trembled faintly in the air Noel, who had slept
undisturbed through all the clamor of the dogs, stirred uneasily by the
foremast. As it deepened and swelled into a roar that filled all the night
he threw off the caribou skin and came aft to where I was watching
alone. "Das Wayeeses. I know dat hwulf; he follow me one time, oh,
long, long while ago," he whispered. And taking my marine glasses he
stood beside me watching intently.
[Illustration: "The terrible howl of the great white wolf"]
There was another long period of waiting; our eyes grew weary, filled
as they were with shadows and uncertainties in the moonlight, and we
turned our ears to the hills, waiting with strained, silent expectancy for
the challenge. Suddenly Noel pointed upward and my eye caught
something moving swiftly on the crest of the mountain. A shadow with
the slinking trot of a wolf glided along the ridge between us and the

moon. Just in front of us it stopped, leaped upon a big rock, turned a
pointed nose up to the sky, sharp and clear as a fir top in the moonlight,
and--_ooooooo-ow-wow-wow!_ the terrible howl of a great white wolf
tumbled down on the husky dogs and set them howling as if possessed.
No doubt now of their queer actions which had puzzled me for hours
past. The wild wolf had called and the tame wolves waked to answer.
Before my dull ears had heard a rumor of it they were crazy with the
excitement. Now every chord in their wild hearts was twanging its
thrilling answer to the leader's summons, and my own heart awoke and
thrilled as it never did before to the call of a wild beast.
For an hour or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate
mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be free
again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs, which
refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from
overmastering temptation. Then the shadow vanished from the big rock
on the mountain, the huskies fled away wildly from the shore, and only
the sob of the breakers broke the stillness.
That was my first (and Noel's last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the
huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea
to study. All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed
him, guided sometimes by a rumor--a hunter's story or a postman's
fright, caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with
his dogs through the long winter night--and again by a track on the
shore of some lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou
flying wildly from some unseen danger. Here is the white wolf's story,
learned partly from much watching and following his tracks alone, but
more from Noel the Indian hunter, in endless tramps over the hills and
caribou marshes and in long quiet talks in the firelight beside the
salmon rivers.

Where the Trail Begins From a cave in the rocks, on the unnamed
mountains that tower over Harbor Weal on the north and east, a huge
mother wolf appeared, stealthily, as all wolves come out of their dens.
A pair of green eyes glowed steadily like coals deep within the dark
entrance; a massive gray head rested unseen against the lichens of a
gray rock; then the whole gaunt body glided like a passing cloud
shadow into the June sunshine and was lost in a cleft of the rocks.

There, in the deep shadow where no eye might notice the movement,
the old wolf shook off the delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all
her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the
toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders
till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out
straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little
jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and
showing her red gums with the black fringes