The Black Wolf Pack

by Daniel Carter Beard

Now, boys, do not make any mistake about me, I am not a hero and never posed as one; in truth my timidity at times amounts to cowardice, a fact which I usually keep to myself, but I never was afraid of wolves until I so unexpectedly met this one. It is needless to say that I have no hair on my back, it is as bare as that of any other fellow’s, nevertheless, on this occasion I could distinctly feel my bristles rise from the nape of my neck to the end of my spine, just the same as those on the oblique-eyed, shaggy monster whose snapping teeth were so near my face.

Everybody is familiar with the fact that people who have had limbs amputated often complain of pains or itching in the missing members. My missing back hair, the hair which my ancestors lost by the slow process of evolution, the hair which grew on the back of the “missing link,” stood on end at the sight of this wolf. However, this fear was but momentary and when my courage returned I lifted my rod case in a threatening manner, and the wolf slunk away as noiselessly as a shadow, and like a shadow faded out of sight in the dim twilight of the ancient forest. When I reached the open land beyond the forest another surprise awaited me.

Surely this is heaven, I thought as I waded knee-deep among the beautiful flowers of the prairie, starting the sharp pin-tailed grouse, prairie chickens and sage grouse from their retreats and sending the meadow-larks skimming away over flowering billows. Reaching an elevation where I could peer beyond the crests of one of the “ground swells” which furrowed the sea of nodding blossoms, I saw through the stems of the plants, a part of the prairie at first concealed from view, and there appeared to be numerous irregular boulders of dark brown stone scattered around among the vegetation, and the boulders were moving!

Careful scrutiny, however, proved them to be not stones but live buffalo. Big Pete had often told me that these animals lived unmolested by him in the park; but when I realized that I was looking at between three and four hundred real buffalo my heart gave a great jump of joy. I tried to view them so as to take in their details, but the apparently shapeless masses of dark reddish brown wool appeared to have none, unless indeed the comical fur trousers with frayed bottoms on their front legs might be called detail.

Even the faces of the beasts were so concealed by masks of knotted wool that at first I could distinguish neither eyes, noses, horns or ears; but in spite of their ragged trousers and their masked faces, the bison are sublime in their mighty strength and ponderous proportions, and as this was the first wild herd I had ever seen and one of the very few, if not the only one, then extant, I viewed them with the keenest interest.

But the scattered bunches of antelope, which I now noticed were dotting the plains around the buffalo, appealed to my love of the beautiful. Knowing that in other localities these charming little creatures are rapidly being slaughtered and steadily decreasing in numbers and that all attempts to breed them in captivity have so far failed, they at once absorbed my attention to the exclusion of their larger neighbors.

When we moved our camp to the far side of the lake, Big Pete told me that I could find plenty of trout streams beyond the timber belt, and he also informed me that I could there see the walls of the park and satisfy myself that there was but one trail leading into the preserve.

I do not now recall the sort of walls that were pictured in my mind or know what I really expected to see enclosing Darlinkel’s Park, but I do know that when I suddenly emerged from the dark forests into the sunlit prairie, the scene which greeted my vision was not the one painted by my imagination.

Before me stretched an open plain surrounded by mountains arising abruptly from a bed of many colored flowers; they were the same ranges whose snow-covered peaks formed a feature of the landscape at the lake and at our first camp.

Here, however, their appearance was different, as different as the dark forest from the open sunlit prairie. The scene at first did not seem real, it had a sort of a drop-curtain effect that was as familiar to me as the row of footlights and gilded boxes, but never did I expect to see those delicate tints, that blue atmosphere, the fresco colored rocks and all the theatrical properties of a drop-curtain duplicated in nature, yet here it was before me, not a detail wanting, even the impossible mammoth bed of gaudy flowers at the foot of the mountain was here and the numerous cascades had not been forgotten. Well, it does seem wonderful to me that unknown theatrical daubers should know so much more of nature than the public for whom they paint.