The whole scene appeared to me to be exceedingly funny and, in a spirit of utter reckless bravado, I doffed my fur cap, with exaggerated politeness made a low bow, and, addressing the largest and most devilish-looking wolf in the pack, exclaimed,
“Ah! this is Monsieur Loup-Garou, I believe. Pardon me, Monsieur, but did you speak a moment since?”
But Big Pete Darlinkel looked at the wolves, and great beads of sweat stood on his forehead. It was his turn to have the shivers. There was no more color in his face than in a peeled turnip. His gun shook in his left hand like a aspen, while the spangled gun in his right hand dropped its muzzle towards earth and there was scarcely strength enough in his nerveless fingers to have pulled a hair-trigger.
Pete’s great baby-blue eyes turned helplessly to me; but it was now my innings, and with a cheery voice I cried,
“Why, Pete, old fellow, what ails you?” Then meanly quoting his own words, I added, “They hain’t nothing but wolves!”
There is not a shadow of a doubt that Pete expected the wolves to answer me with human voice, and I am willing to confess that, even to me, there seemed to be no other alternative for the slant-eyed bandits to pursue. But for the present they appeared to prefer to maintain a solemn silence.
The middle wolf had been looking intently at us for some time before a well-modulated voice said,
“I have answered your call, gentlemen; how can I serve you?”
I was more than half expecting some such answer, but if it had not been so evident that Big Pete was badly frightened and had lost all his self-possession, I should have thought he was again practising his art as ventriloquist.
Of course I deceived myself. The wolves had no more power of speech than a house-dog. But I really thought the wolves were doing the talking until I caught sight of a tall man of handsome and distinguished appearance seated among the weird goblin-thistles just above the wolves. The stranger appeared to be a man of almost any age; he might be young but, if old, he was wonderfully well preserved. He was clad in a light-colored buckskin suit of clothes, edged and trimmed with fur, a fur cap on his head and moccasins on his feet. And I noticed, with a start, that he had that same red porcupine quill ornament on his hunting shirt that the young Indian wore.