"No," said Jack, "I don't think so."
"Well," said Hugh, "I only speak of it to show how tough a wolf is. Billy had gone out just in the gray dawn of the morning, and just as he shut the door behind him, a big wolf came around the corner of the house. Billy jumped back into the house to get his gun, and the wolf ran off and stopped to look around on the top of that little knoll south of the house. He was about a hundred yards off, and Billy fired and the wolf yelled and fell down, and then started off. Billy and old Shep, the house dog, started after him, and when they got up to where he had stood, they found the ground all covered with blood and a broad blood trail leading off over the hills. Billy started on the trail, expecting to find the wolf over the next hill, but he followed him for two miles before he overtook him, and then the wolf was strong enough to sit up and fight off the dog, and needed another shot to kill him. But when Bill went up to him he found that the bullet had gone almost the whole length of the wolf and had smashed one of its shoulders. I had a friend who was trapping down in South Park and set two or three traps for wolves, and one morning when he found one of them gone, he went back and got two or three hounds that were at the ranch and took after the wolf through the snow, for it was winter. They chased that wolf with the dogs for thirteen hours before they got him, and he came mighty near getting away then."
CHAPTER VII
A TALK ABOUT BEAVER
"Well, now, Hugh," asked Jack, "what can you tell me about beaver trapping?"
"Why, son," said Hugh, "I can tell you whole lot about beaver trapping. There is a great big book to be written yet about beaver and how to trap them, and when that book is written there will be enough left out of it to make another book."
"I've always heard," said Jack, "that beaver was about the smartest animal there was, and the one most difficult to trap, but, of course, I don't know anything about it. I have seen a few dams and the tops of a few houses up north, but you can't learn much about beaver by looking at his work."
"No," said Hugh, "not much, and before you can learn anything about trapping beaver, you've got to know something about the nature of the beast."