VIII
THE LAST WOLF OF THE PACK
GRAY COAT, leader of the great Timber Wolf Pack, originally came from the wilds of Northern Canada, where the dense forests form safe shelter and cover for deer, bear, the red fox, and all the wild kindred who seek the silent places of the woods, far away from man. But one year lumbermen entered the forest with their whirring saws, and felling the tall pines, let in light into the dark places and uncovered their trails. The wolf pack was tracked and gradually thinned out and scattered, and Gray Coat, the big, brave leader of the pack, one day realized that he was just one solitary, lonely old wolf roaming the forests alone.
Gray Coat always seemed to lead a charmed sort of life, for no matter how skilfully traps were laid for him he never ventured into one of them, no matter how pressing his hunger might be. Often, nowadays, he would starve for days because he hated the whine of the lumbermen’s saws, and they had frightened away the young deer, so that no longer did they come in early morning and at dew-fall to water at the old pool. Already ferns grew rank and untrodden over the old deer trails, and although Gray Coat watched and prowled about their old haunts, he never caught sight of even one red coat or flashing white tail.
At last the sides of Gray Coat began to show hollowly, gaunt and thin, and his coat became rough and shabby, a starved, baffled look gleamed in his sullen, green eyes, and his long, usually fleet legs were weak from fasting and often played him strange tricks; for sometimes when he chased a cottontail, because he had become reduced to such small fare, instead of the coveted tidbit, his lean, cruel jaws clicked together upon emptiness; he had somehow just missed the rabbit. Then Gray Coat instinctively knew that something strange and unusual had happened to him.
One night, too weak and lonely and disheartened to even start off trailing game, he sat solitary and unhappy just in the edge of a pine slash and lifting up his voice he howled and howled at the moon which looked coldly down upon his misery. It is during the winter that the wolves herd together, traveling in packs, but in spring they separate and mate. But although Gray Coat longed for companionship, there seemed to be no mate for him, for all his kindred had been hunted away from the old haunts. Had Gray Coat only been human, he would have wept bitterly; as he was only a wolf, he just sat all hunched up together, his lean snout low between his haunches, only lifting up his head to send his long howl through the woods.
Then somewhere, after a little silence, a very welcome sound came through the moonlit woods, the long, familiar cry of a wolf.
“Ah-h-o-o-o-oo, Ah-h-o-o-o-oo,” it wailed through the long dusky corridors of the pines. And the next instant Gray Coat forgot all his troubles and, leaping to his feet, with all his strength he sent back a loud-quavering howl of command and pleading.