Northern Trails, Book I. | Page 7

and
cunning beyond measure, that haunted the lonely thickets and ponds
bordering the great caribou barrens over the ridge, and that kept a silent

watch, within howling distance, over the den which he never saw.
Sometimes the mother wolf met him on her wanderings and they
hunted together. Often he brought the game he had caught, a fox or a
young goose; and sometimes when she had hunted in vain he met her,
as if he had understood her need from a distance, and led her to where
he had buried two or three of the rabbits that swarmed in the thickets.
But spite of the attention and the indifferent watch which he kept, he
never ventured near the den, which he could have found easily enough
by following the mother's track. The old she-wolf would have flown at
his throat like a fury had he showed his head over the top of the ridge.
The reason for this was simple enough to the savage old mother,
though there are some things about it that men do not yet understand.
Wolves, like cats and foxes, and indeed like most wild male animals,
have an atrocious way of killing their own young when they find them
unprotected; so the mother animal searches out a den by herself and
rarely allows the male to come near it. Spite of this beastly habit it must
be said honestly of the old he-wolf that he shows a marvelous
gentleness towards his mate. He runs at the slightest show of teeth from
a mother wolf half his size, and will stand meekly a snap of the jaws or
a cruel gash of the terrible fangs in his flank without defending himself.
Even our hounds seem to have inherited something of this primitive
wolf trait, for there are seasons when, unless urged on by men, they
will not trouble a mother wolf or fox. Many times, in the early spring,
when foxes are mating, and again later when they are heavy with young
and incapable of a hard run, I have caught my hounds trotting meekly
after a mother fox, sniffing her trail indifferently and sitting down with
heads turned aside when she stops for a moment to watch and yap at
them disdainfully. And when you call them they come shamefaced;
though in winter-time, when running the same fox to death, they pay no
more heed to your call than to the crows clamoring over them. But we
must return to Wayeeses, sitting over her den on a great gray rock,
trying every breeze, searching every movement, harking to every chirp
and rustle before bringing her cubs out into the world.
Satisfied at last with her silent investigation she turned her head
towards the den. There was no sound, only one of those silent,
unknown communications that pass between animals. Instantly there
was a scratching, scurrying, whining, and three cubs tumbled out of the

dark hole in the rocks, with fuzzy yellow fur and bright eyes and sharp
ears and noses, like collies, all blinking and wondering and suddenly
silent at the big bright world which they had never seen before, so
different from the dark den under the rocks.
Indeed it was a marvelous world that the little cubs looked upon when
they came out to blink and wonder in the June sunshine. Contrasts
everywhere, that made the world seem too big for one little glance to
comprehend it all. Here the sunlight streamed and danced and quivered
on the warm rocks; there deep purple cloud shadows rested for hours,
as if asleep, or swept over the mountain side in an endless game of
fox-and-geese with the sunbeams. Here the birds trilled, the bees
hummed in the bluebells, the brook roared and sang on its way to the
sea; while over all the harmony of the world brooded a silence too great
to be disturbed. Sunlight and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines
and dazzling mountain tops, mayflowers and singing birds and rustling
winds filled all the earth with color and movement and melody. From
under their very feet great masses of rock, tossed and tumbled as by a
giant's play, stretched downwards to where the green woods began and
rolled in vast billows to the harbor, which shone and sparkled in the sun,
yet seemed no bigger than their mother's paw. Fishing-boats with
shining sails hovered over it, like dragon-flies, going and coming from
the little houses that sheltered together under the opposite mountain,
like a cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine stump. Most
wonderful, most interesting of all was the little gray hut on the shore,
almost under their feet, where little Noel and the Indian children played
with the tide like fiddler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the
fishermen