Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

That pack, or another one, must have been nearer than we thought. Perhaps they saw us as we hurried down the last slope through deepening shadows. No doubt they will soon be sniffing our trail. In the early evening a young wolf is apt to raise a great howl when he runs across the fresh trail of a man; not because he knows what it is, but for precisely the opposite reason. “Will they follow or chase us?” you ask; which shows that you have been reading wolf stories. “No, these big timber wolves never hunt a man,” I answer, and that answer is true. Nevertheless, your stride lengthens; there is a feeling of lightness in your heels; you are a little nervous, and your scalp is tight; wait a bit.

A fallen pine stub offers an inviting seat under the shore, where we sit down to “rest a pipe,” listening alertly to the wolves, trying to gauge their course for the next hunting,—their hunting and mine, for I shall surely follow them at daybreak. Aha! hear that.

An awful row, wailing, ululating, breaks out from the hill above us, where young wolves of the pack are clamoring over our trail. They have found it, all right. One can easily fancy now that they are coming on the jump; but they are not even headed this way, never fear. They are merely puzzled or excited over a new thing. Later, when they grow quiet, some of them may steal down to have a look at us; but they will take good care that we do not have a look at them. Their howling, especially when heard by a solitary man at night, has a strangely disturbing quality, rasping our civilized nerves like sandpaper. If you are not accustomed to the cry, panic and imaginary terrors are bred of it, and all the foolish stories of wolf ferocity you ever heard come crowding back to demand, “Now will you listen to us? Now will you believe?” No, not a bit. Every ferocious wolf story I ever heard (every American story, at least) is an invention absurdly at variance with the wolf’s character. So we finish the pipe, slowly for discipline, and move campward through the witchery of the wilderness night. The wolves have ceased their howling; the world is intensely still.

A ruddy gleam breaks suddenly from the dark bulk of trees; and Bob, hearing the click of snowshoes, comes out from the fire where he has been keeping supper warm for the greater pleasure of sharing it. “Welcome home, b’y! What luck?” he calls; and something in his voice tells me that he, too, has good news, which waits only an occasion for telling. The occasion comes as we eat leisurely, thankfully, before the glowing birch logs; while night gathers close about our little “Commoosie,” and our fire makes the wilderness home.

TWO ENDS OF A BEAR STORY

IN my “Benacadie,” or home camp, one summer was a cow, very much out of focus, that had been led far through the woods, and then, in a lunatic moment, had been rolled into a bateau and rowed across the big lake. That last was a brave adventure, especially when the cow, not knowing why she should be bundled up like a sack, kicked free of the straps, heaved up on wobbly legs, and tried to climb out of the boat; but that is not the comedy.

Not far from “Benacadie,” on the other side of a wooded ridge, was a beaver meadow sparsely overgrown with ash and alder, where the cow was tied out every morning in blue-joint grass up to her eyes. It was fine pasturage, and the cow, being a sensible creature when she was not in a boat, proceeded to make cream of it. Before the season was over she became a pet and, like most pets, something also of a nuisance. She had a genius for freedom and diet; no sooner had she slipped her halter than she would come begging for cake at the kitchen. She would poke her head into open doors at unseemly hours of the night, or moo into open windows at cockcrow in the morning. When she had eaten all she wanted of grass or browse, then her thoughts turned to pastures new, and she would follow any foot-loose man wherever he might be going.

In camp that summer was a cookee and handy man, who had been hired to do whatever anybody else or the cook shied at. It was a loose kind of contract, but Cookee kept his part of it admirably, stopping his whistle to answer our lumberman’s hail of “Cookee here!” and tackling any job with unfailing good humor. Though he got the burnt end of every stick, he believed he was born lucky until the bear chased him; after that he was sure of it. One of his jobs was to mog over to the beaver meadow before sundown, and lead the cow home to her shack for the night. She was a precious old beast, the only one of her kind in the whole region, and because there were bear signs in the woods we were taking no chances. Her owner said she would be worth a hundred dollars if we did not bring her back; and that is a lot of money to put into a bear bait.