This large mossy hemlock was a few yards to the right of our camp. It leaned down and rested partly in a great elm that stood on the bank of the stream.
Any one could make a run and scramble up the trunk of this tree to the first limbs, twelve or fourteen feet. Ed and I only waited to place two big stones from the arch upon our pork cask, and also to throw our flour-bag and meal-bag upon the roof of the shed. Then we scrambled after Vet.
We got amongst the green boughs, and perched ourselves as comfortably as we could. There was no wind, and the temperature could not have been below freezing, much.
We had but just got into the hemlock when two or three wolves ran by, and were soon scurrying about our "arch" and camp,–going and coming, here and there, uttering, now and then, a quick, eager yelp, like hounds hunting a track.
Though it was pretty dark, we could distinguish their dusky forms. We could hear them eating, too, the bones, scraps and offal we hand thrown out,–quarrelling, snapping and fighting with one another.
Several times, one or more of them were on the shed-roof. They dragged off the meal-bag, and tugged at the cloths, and dragged the bag about the ground. Then they began to jump into the little spotted maple. This was so near that we could see them better. They tore down the tin dishes, and still kept leaping up.
"Good-by, candles!" muttered Ed. "They're after that pail of bear's grease."
Pretty soon, we heard the pail go down, thump! into the box of "salts," that was, as I have said, underneath it. Then there was a great rush and snapping of the whole pack–twenty to thirty of them, we thought–as they licked it up from among the salts.
They hurried hither and thither around the camp for ten or fifteen minutes longer, then dropped off, one after another, in response to howlings further down the stream.