“It’s a wolf!” cried Oscar. “The Sunday that Uncle Aleck and I saw one from the bluff yonder, he was just like that. Hush, Sandy, don’t talk so loud, or you’ll frighten him off before we can get a crack at him. Let’s go up the trail by the ravine, and perhaps we can get a shot before he sees us.”
It was seldom that the boys stirred abroad without firearms of some sort. This time they had a shot-gun and a rifle with them, and, examining the weapons as they went, they ran down into a dry gully, to follow which would bring them unperceived almost as directly to the cabin as by the regular trail. As noiselessly as possible, the boys ran up the gully trail, their hearts beating high with expectation. It would be a big feather in their caps if they could only have a gray wolf’s skin to show their elders on their return from Chapman’s.
“You go round the upper side of the house with your rifle, Oscar, and I’ll go round the south side with the shot-gun,” was Charlie’s advice to his cousin when they had reached the spring at the head of the gully, back of the log-cabin. With the utmost caution, the two boys crept around opposite corners of the house, each hoping he would be lucky enough to secure the first shot. Sandy remained behind, waiting with suppressed excitement for the shot. Instead of the report of a firearm, he heard a peal of laughter from both boys. 191
“What is it?” he cried, rushing from his place of concealment. “What’s the great joke?”
“Nothing,” said Oscar, laughing heartily, “only that as I was stealing around the corner here by the corral, Charlie was tiptoeing round the other corner with his eyes bulging out of his head as if he expected to see that wolf.”
“Yes,” laughed Charlie, “and if Oscar had been a little quicker, he would have fired at me. He had his gun aimed right straight ahead as he came around the corner of the cabin.”
“And that wolf is probably miles and miles away from here by this time, while you two fellows were sneaking around to find him. Just as if he was going to wait here for you!” It was Sandy’s turn to laugh, then.
The boys examined the tracks left in the soft loam of the garden by the strange animal, and came to the conclusion that it must have been a very large wolf, for its footsteps were deep as if it were a heavy creature, and their size was larger than that of any wolf-tracks they had ever seen.
When the elders heard the story on their arrival from Chapman’s, that evening, Uncle Aleck remarked with some grimness, “So the wolf is at the door at last, boys.” The lads by this understood that poverty could not be far off; but they could not comprehend that poverty could affect them in a land where so much to live upon was running wild, so to speak. 192
“Who is this that rides so fast?” queried Charlie, a day or two after the wolf adventure, as he saw a stranger riding up the trail from the ford. It was very seldom that any visitor, except the good Younkins, crossed their ford. And Younkins always came over on foot.