Northern Trails, Book I. | Page 6

and the long white fangs
that could reach a deer's heart in a single snap. Then she leaped upon a
great rock and sat up straight, with her bushy tail curled close about her
fore paws, a savage, powerful, noble-looking beast, peering down
gravely over the green mountains to the shining sea.
A moment before the hillside had appeared utterly lifeless, so still and
rugged and desolate that one must notice and welcome the stir of a
mouse or ground squirrel in the moss, speaking of life that is glad and
free and vigorous even in the deepest solitudes; yet now, so quietly did
the old wolf appear, so perfectly did her rough gray coat blend with the
rough gray rocks, that the hillside seemed just as tenantless as before. A
stray wind seemed to move the mosses, that was all. Only where the
mountains once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw
every moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow
fishing-boats far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's
heard every chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood
everything was holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its
message. For the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the
big world, and no wild mother ever lets that happen without first taking
infinite precautions that her little ones be not molested nor made afraid.
A faint breeze from the west strayed over the mountains and instantly
the old wolf turned her sensitive nose to question it. There on her right,
and just across a deep ravine where a torrent went leaping down to the
sea in hundred-foot jumps, a great stag caribou was standing, still as a
stone, on a lofty pinnacle, looking down over the marvelous panorama
spread wide beneath his feet. Every day Megaleep came there to look,
and the old wolf in her daily hunts often crossed the deep path which he
had worn through the moss from the wide table-lands over the ridge to
this sightly place where he could look down curiously at the comings
and goings of men on the sea. But at this season when small game was

abundant--and indeed at all seasons when not hunger-driven--the wolf
was peaceable and the caribou were not molested. Indeed the big stag
knew well where the old wolf denned. Every east wind brought her
message to his nostrils; but secure in his own strength and in the
general peace which prevails in the summer-time among all large
animals of the north, he came daily to look down on the harbor and
wag his ears at the fishing-boats, which he could never understand.
Strange neighbors these, the grim, savage mother wolf of the mountains,
hiding her young in dens of the rocks, and the wary, magnificent
wanderer of the broad caribou barrens; but they understood each other,
and neither wolf nor caribou had any fear or hostile intent one for the
other. And this is not strange at all, as might be supposed by those who
think animals are governed by fear on one hand and savage cruelty on
the other, but is one of the commonest things to be found by those who
follow faithfully the northern trails.
Wayeeses had chosen her den well, on the edge of the untrodden
solitudes--sixty miles as the crow flies--that stretch northward from
Harbor Weal to Harbor Woe. It was just under the ridge, in a sunny
hollow among the rocks, on the southern slope of the great mountains.
The earliest sunshine found the place and warmed it, bringing forth the
bluebells for a carpet, while in every dark hollow the snow lingered all
summer long, making dazzling white patches on the mountain; and
under the high waterfalls, that looked from the harbor like bits of silver
ribbon stretched over the green woods, the ice clung to the rocks in
fantastic knobs and gargoyles, making cold, deep pools for the trout to
play in. So it was both cool and warm there, and whatever the weather
the gaunt old mother wolf could always find just the right spot to sleep
away the afternoon. Best of all it was perfectly safe; for though from
the door of her den she could look down on the old Indian's cabin, like
a pebble on the shore, so steep were the billowing hills and so
impassable the ravines that no human foot ever trod the place, not even
in autumn when the fishermen left their boats at anchor in Harbor Weal
and camped inland on the paths of the big caribou herds.
Whether or not the father wolf ever knew where his cubs were hidden
only he himself could tell. He was an enormous brute, powerful