“It was growing late when we were ready to start home, but Isabel said we could make it before dark.
“We followed the road half a mile and then took a short cut through the woods up Sugar Creek. We had come out of the woods and were halfway across a big pasture field when from behind us we heard a sound that made us stop in terror. We listened. It came again. It was the cry of a wolf! I had often heard a wolf howl, but I had always been safe at home, and even then it had scared me.
“Again and again came the long drawn-out howl from the woods we had just left.
“Isabel took my hand and we ran as fast as we could toward the little creek that ran through the field. It had been years and years since a pack of wolves had been seen in our neighborhood, but before we reached the foot-log another howl and another and another had been added to the first.
“Looking back over my shoulder as I ran, I saw a skulking form come out of the woods and start across the field. Isabel saw it, too.
“‘We’ll have to stop, Sarah,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to climb a tree.’
“There was a slender young hickory a little this side of the run. Isabel lifted me as high as she could and I caught a branch and pulled myself up into the tree. I turned to help Isabel when, to my horror, I saw that she could never make it. A whole pack of wolves loping across the field were almost upon her.
“Catching up the hoe, Isabel ran for the foot-log. She had barely reached the middle of it when the wolves halted at the creek bank. A few of them had stopped at my tree and were howling up at me. If all had stopped, it would have given Isabel a chance to get into one of the trees on the other side of the creek.
“But she couldn’t do it now. She walked back and forth on the log, brandishing the hoe in the cruel eyes of the wolves. The wolves that had stopped under my tree soon joined their friends on the bank, and Isabel called out to me, ‘Do not make any noise, Sarah, and they will forget you are there.’ I remembered hearing my father tell about some wolves that had gnawed a young tree in two, and I clung there in fear and trembling.