Shasta of the Wolves

by Olaf Baker

As Gomposh did not seem inclined to talk any more, Shasta thought he would continue his walk. It was good to be out on the trails again, passing where the wild feet passed that had never known what it was to be held prisoners in one place. And as he went, all his senses were on the watch to see and hear and smell everything that was going on. Softly he went, without the slightest sound, putting his hands and feet so delicately to the ground that not a leaf rustled, not a twig snapped.

But wary though he was, other things were even warier. Gleaming eyes he did not see watched him out of sight. Keen noses winded him—noses of creatures that kept their bodies a secret almost from themselves! And so when Shasta suddenly found himself face to face with a big bull moose he nearly jumped out of himself with astonishment.

It was not the first time that he had seen moose. In the early summer, down in the alder thicket at the edge of the lake, Shasta, watching motionless between the leaves, had seen a big cow and her lanky calf come down into the lake. The cow began to busy herself by pulling water-lily roots, and the calf nosed along the bank in an inquisitive manner as if it still found the world a most bewildering place. They did not seem animals to be frightened at; and even the big cow looked a harmless sort of being whose mind, what there was of it, was in her mouth and ears. But the huge bull now in front of Shasta was a very different sort of beast. From the ground to the ridge of the immense fore shoulders, he measured a good six feet. That great humped ridge covered with thick black hair seemed to mound itself over some enormous strength which lay solid and compact ready to hurl itself forth at an instant's notice in one terrifying blow which would smash any object that dared to challenge it. But what impressed Shasta more than anything else was the great spread of polished antlers on each side of his head. Antlers like those he had never seen. It was like wearing a forest on your forehead: it made you uncomfortable to look at: it was like being an animal and a tree at the same time.

The moose was equally surprised at Shasta. With all the creatures of the forest—lynxes, catamounts, raccoons, wolves, deer, foxes, bears and chipmunks—he was familiar. But this smooth, hornless, round-headed thing was Like none of them. It had a shape and a character extraordinarily different; and the big moose was not pleased. There was another thing that he did not like, and that was Shasta's smell. Not that this was so unfamiliar as his shape. Indeed, something like it the moose had often smelt before. Moreover, it was a smell that always made him angry. It was that of the wolves. And yet, mingled with it in a curious and bewildering way, there was another odour, not so pungent as the wolf scent, but hardly less objectionable to the moose, and that was the smell of man. What this might mean, the moose did not know. Along all the lonely trails of his wild and adventurous life, he had never yet come within sight or scent of the creature that went always upon its hind legs, with cunning in its hornless head, and death that it shot out with its hands.

With his great over-hanging muzzle lifted up, and his nostrils quivering, he looked at Shasta viciously out of his little gleaming eyes.

It was the wolf in Shasta that made the creature angry. From the endless generations behind him—grandfathers and grandfathers' grandfathers that reached back beyond the flood—there had come down to him, through the uncounted ages, this hatred, born of fear, of the wolves. It was not that he feared any single wolf. Few wolves in all that immense North Land would have dared to attack him singly, or dispute his lordship of the world. But when the snows lay heavy on the hemlocks, and the nights were keen with a bitter air from the white heart of the Pole, those long shadow-like shapes that came floating over the barrens in packs, with the hunting note in their throats, were not things to be treated contemptuously by even the lordliest moose, at home in his winter "Yard."

Shasta, on his side, felt no enmity towards the moose. He was not wolf enough to have the moose-hatred—handed down, pack after pack, since the beginning of the world—running in his blood. What he inherited from his grandfathers' grandfathers were Indian instincts, though, in his utter ignorance of his nature, he did not know them for what they were. So he just stared at the moose with a great astonishment, and wondered what would be the right thing to do.

In spite of himself, he felt a little uneasy. Something—he didn't know what—warned him that the moose did not like him, and therefore was not going to be his friend. Left to himself, Shasta was willing to be friends—if they would let him—with all the forest folk. And as he never frightened them, or attempted to do them any hurt, most of the creatures came to regard him as a harmless sort of person. Those that did not, respected him too much to molest him because of his strange man-smell, which was so dangerously mixed with that of wolf. But now, here was a beast which, he felt sure, was so far from being his friend that it would take only some very little thing to turn him into a dangerous enemy. A movement, a look, a puff of air to make scent stronger—and some terrible thing might happen: you could never tell.

Now Shasta knew several ways of making himself a bigger person, as it were, and so more to be respected. One was to keep as still as a stone, and to put all of himself into his eyes, staring and staring till it seemed as if they must suddenly become mouths and bite; which made the creatures so uneasy that very few could stand it for long, and would politely melt away among the trees. Another was to make some sudden, violent movement, and to give the hunting cry of the wolves with his full throat. That struck fear into most animals; and they would flee in panic, never stopping till they had put long lengths of trail between them and the little naked Terror that had the wolf-cry in its throat. But now, though Shasta put everything that was in him into his eyes, the big bull bore the stare in an unflinching manner, and stared back defiantly. He did more. He began to paw the ground impatiently with one of his hoofs, as if to show that he was tired of this duel with the eyes, and wanted to try some more complete trial of strength. If Shasta had looked particularly at the pawing hoof, he would have noticed how deeply cleft it was, and what sharp cutting edges it had. A terrible instrument that, when it descended like a sledge-hammer with all the weight of the huge seven-hundred-pound body behind it to give it driving force! But Shasta was too much occupied in attending to the expression in the animal's eyes, and in fearful admiration of the huge spreading antlers that made so grand an ornament to the mighty head.

And then, because the Spirit of the wild things did not tell him what to do, or because, if it did, his attention was too much taken up to give heed to its warning, he did the wrong thing instead of the right one. With a sudden spring in the air, he loosed the wolf-cry from his throat.