Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

“With a sudden access of courage he pounced on his find, whirled it up in the air, scampered hither and yon like a playing kitten.”

Still back-tracking the cub into the woods beyond the lake, I found where a pack of eight or ten wolves had crossed my snowshoe trail the evening before. They approached it warily, for either they had seen me or else I had just passed, leaving every track reeking with the man scent. Every wolf had put his nose to my footing before leaping over it. While the pack swept on for the night’s hunting, a single wolf turned to follow me, and probably had me in sight all the way to camp, keeping himself hidden in the dusk of the winter woods.

There were some big wolves in this pack, two especially; but none left a track large enough for the loup-garou. My imagination, having drawn that fellow on a grand scale, was hard to satisfy. He had howled farther to the north and east, I judged; yet there was better chance to find him with the pack at this hour than to pick up his trail by casting about the vast forest. On that chance I followed the pack, only to meet with endless difficulty. The wolves were hunting keenly, scattering in such devious fashion that I abandoned their trail with the thought that I would find them by aid of the inquisitive cub. After leaving me, you remember, he had headed away to the northwest; as I was now well north of camp, I need go only a few miles westward in order to cross his trail.

Should you be interested enough in woodcraft to ask a reason for this departure, the answer is that I wanted to get quickly to where the wolves had killed and eaten; after which it would be easier to follow them, since they grow lazy after feeding, and travel by runways instead of sweeping the whole country. It might take hours of hard trailing to find their kill; but the cub-wolf would go to it like a homing bee the moment he felt hungry. And that suggests another curious bit of animal lore (one which may be questioned, but of which I had myself no doubt), that a lone wolf always knows where his pack is feeding or resting. They may be asleep in their day bed far away, after roving uncounted miles since he left them; yet by some instinct or extra sense he seems able to go straight to them at any hour of the day or night.

Holding across the wild country, therefore, within the hour I had picked up the forward trail of my cub-wolf. As I expected, he had followed a direct course till his trail joined that of the pack, some four or five miles from my camp. Here I made two heartening discoveries: the first, that the wolves had fed and were now roaming with slow feet and heavy stomachs; the second, that they had been joined by a huge wolf that was not with them when they crossed my snowshoe trail. “The loup-garou, and a monster!” I thought exultingly as I measured his tracks, the largest I have ever found. Folding my fingers flat at the second joint, I could drop my gloved hand into the print of his forefoot; where snow was soft he sank deep as a buck at every step. Best of all, he had fed, he was logy, he must soon grow sleepy; and, O day of good luck! I had yet six hours of sunlight. Before dark I would run into that pack, and then— The revolver butt snuggled into my hand to say that we would then know whether the loup-garou had any medicine to compare with a long-barreled, target-sighted, velvet-triggered forty-four.

There was no call to hurry; the longer the wolves slept, the more secure they would feel; so to satisfy my curiosity, and prove or disprove my notion of wolf habits, I decided to follow my cub awhile more. Instead of running with the pack, he had taken their back trail; which told me that he expected to find food.

On the ice of a little pond I found a buck stretched out. The trail said that the wolves jumped him on the ridge above, caught him after a short run, ate what they wanted, and left the rest to the foxes. Here was abundance of good meat, enough to satisfy this pack for a week or two; yet to-night or to-morrow night, preferring warm flesh to cold, they would chivvy another deer. My gorge rose at the thought; for though a hungry beast must live, one must take sides with wolf or deer in the wilderness, as he must choose between cats and birds in his home orchard. If any excuse were needed for the joy of hunting, it seemed a desirable thing, like poetic justice, to lay this buck and the wolf that killed him side by side when the day was done.

From the pond I swung away rapidly after the pack, expecting to be near enough for a stalk within an hour or two; but had a man been hunting merely for heads or skins, the trail would have spelled hope, vexation and heartbreak in quick succession. For a time the wolves roamed lazily, but not aimlessly. They had in mind a day bed near the scene of the next hunting (wolves do not harry the same ground two nights in succession), and though they were constantly making detours, following an easy runway between hills or seeking a safe crossing of swift water, they held a westward direction as true as a compass. I was glad of that course, because it might bring me near a chain of lakes where I had a snowshoe trail, one that I could follow homeward after dark if need be. To the south also the lay of the land was familiar; but northward stretched a wild country which I had never entered.

The trail of a wolf pack is never a dull trail, and at first I gave myself up to full enjoyment of it, here puzzling over a record that I could not understand, there finding another so typical that at times I seemed to be trailing a band of roving dogs. Wolves do not blunder through a region; they are alive and inquisitive every moment, the youngsters especially. In this pack the loup-garou and a big female held together (it was the end of winter, near the mating season), while the cubs and yearlings were continually going off on side tours of investigation. To follow these excursions, learning what pleased or puzzled the intelligent brutes, was part of the fun of trailing; yes, and a better part than pushing blindly ahead, intent on a shot or a killing. I must give the wolves this credit, too, that though they crossed the deep paths of a deer yard, they made no attempt to harry the game. They rarely do so unless they are hungry, or unless (near settlements) they run into a herd of foolish domestic animals that do not know enough to scatter or be quiet when wolves appear.