WOLVES AND WOLF TALESWOLVES AND WOLF TALES
WOLVES AND WOLF TALES
THERE must be something in a wolf which appeals powerfully to the imagination; otherwise there would be no proper wolf stories. You shall understand that “something” if ever you are alone in the winter woods at night, and suddenly from the trail behind you comes a wolf outcry, savage and exultant. There is really no more danger in such a cry than in the clamor of dogs that bay the moon; but, whether it be due to the shadow-filled woods or the remembrance of old nursery tales or the terrible voice of the beast, no sooner does that fierce howling shake your ears than your imagination stirs wildly, your heels also, unless you put a brake on them.
Therefore it befalls, whenever I venture to say, that wolves do not chase men, that some fellowappears with a story to contradict me. Indeed, I contradict myself after a fashion, for I was once rushed by a pack of timber wolves; but that was pure comedy in the end, while the man with a wolf tale always makes a near-tragedy of it. Like this, from a friend who once escaped by the skin of his teeth from a wolf pack:
“It happened out in Minnesota one winter, when I was a boy. The season was fearfully bitter, and the cold had brought down from the north a pest of wolves, big, savage brutes that killed the settlers’ stock whenever they had a chance. We often heard them at night, and it was hard to say whether we were more scared when we heard them howling through the woods or when we didn’t hear them, but knew they were about. Nobody ventured far from the house after dark that winter, I can tell you; not unless he had to.”
Here, though I am following my friend intently, I must jot down a mental note that all good wolf stories are born of just such an atmosphere. They are like trout eggs, which hatch only in chilly water. But let the tale go on:
“Well, father and I were delayed by a broken sled one afternoon, and it was getting dusky when we started on our way home. And a mighty lonely way it was, with nothing but woods, snow, frozen ponds, and one deserted shack on the ten-mileroad. This winter road ran five or six miles through solid forest; then to save rough going it cut across a lake and through a smaller patch of woods, coming out by the clearing where our farm was. I remember vividly the night, so still, so moonlit, so killing-cold. I can hear the sled runners squealing in the snow, and see the horses’ breath in spurts of white rime.
“We came through the first woods all right, hurrying as much as we dared with a light load, and were slipping easily over the ice of the lake when—Woooo!a wolf howled like a lost soul in the woods behind us. I pricked up my ears at that; so did the horses; but before we could catch breath there came an uproar that bristled the hair under our caps. It sounded as if a hundred wolves were yelling all at once; they were right on our trail, and they were coming.
“Father gave just one look behind; then he lashed the horses. They were nervous, and they jumped in the traces, jerking the sled along at a gallop. Only speed and marvelous good luck kept us from upsetting; for there was no pole to steady the sled, only tugs and loose chains, and it slithered over the bare spots like a mad thing. Flying lumps of ice from the horses’ hoofs blinded or half stunned us; all the while we could hear a devilish uproar coming nearer and nearer.
“That rush over the ice was hair-raising enough, but worse was waiting for us on the rough trail. We were dreading it; at least I was, for I knew the horses could never keep up the pace, when we hit the shore of the lake, and hit it foul. The sled jumped in the air and came bang-up against a stump, splintering a runner. I was pitched off on my head; but father flew out like a cat and landed at the horses’ bridles. He had his hands full, too. Before I was on my feet I heard him shouting, ‘Where are you, son? Unhitch! unhitch!’ Almost as quick as I can tell it we had freed the horses, leaped for their backs, and started up the road on the dead run. I was ahead, father pounding along behind, and behind him the howling.
“So we tore out of the woods into the clearing, smashed through the bars, and reached the barn all blowing. There I slid off to swing the door open; but I didn’t have sense enough left to get out of the way of it. My horse was crazy with fright; hardly had I started the door when he bolted against it and knocked me flat. At his heels came father on the jump, and whisked through the doorway, thinking me safe inside. That is the moment which comes back to me most keenly, the moment when he disappeared, and my heart went down with a horrible sinking. The thought of being left out there alone fairly paralyzedme for a moment; then I yelled like a loon, and father came out faster than he went in. He picked me up like a sack, ran into the barn, and slammed the door to. ‘Safe, boy, safe!’ was all he said; but his voice had a queer crack when he said it.
“Then we realized, all of a sudden, that the wolves had quit their howling. Inside the barn we could hear the horses wheezing; outside, the world and everything in it was dead-still. Somehow that awful stillness scared us worse than the noise; we could feel the brutes coming at us from all sides. After watching through a window and listening at cracks for a while, we made a break for the house, and got there before the wolves could catch us.”
I have given only the outline and atmosphere of this wolf story, and it is really too bad to spoil it so; for as my friend tells it, with vivid or picturesque detail, it is very thrilling and all true so far as it goes. After showing my appreciation by letting the tale soak into me, I venture to ask, “Did youseeany wolves that night?”
“No,” he says, frankly, “I didn’t, and I didn’t want to. The howling was plenty for me.”
And there you have it, a right good wolf story with everything properly in it except the wolves. There were no wolf tracks about the sled whenfather and son went back with guns in hand next morning; but there were numerous fresh signs in the distant woods, and these with the howling were enough to convince any reasonable imagination that only the speed of two good horses saved two good men from death or mutilation.
Another friend of mine, a mining engineer in Alaska, is also quite sure that wolves may be dangerous, and in support of this opinion he quotes a personal experience. He went astray in a snowstorm one fall afternoon, and it was growing dark when he sighted a familiar ridge, beyond which was his camp. He was hurrying along silently, as a man goes after nightfall, and had reached a natural opening with evergreens standing thickly all about, when a terrific howling of wolves broke out on a hillside behind him.
The sudden clamor scared him stiff. He listened a moment, his heart thumping as he remembered all the wolf stories he had ever heard; then he started to run, but stopped to listen again. The howling changed to an eager whimper; it came rapidly on, and thinking himself as good as a dead man he jumped for a spruce, and climbed it almost to the top. Hardly was he hidden when a pack of wolves, dark and terrible looking, swept into the open and ran all over it with their noses out, sniffing, sniffing. Suspicion was in everymovement, and to the watcher in the tree the suspicion seemed to point mostly in his direction.
Presently a wolf yelped, and began scratching at a pile of litter on the edge of a thicket. The pack joined him at his digging, dragged out a carcass of some kind from where they had covered it, ate what they wanted, and slipped away into the woods. But once, at some vague alarm, they all stopped eating while two of the largest wolves came slowly across the opening, heads up and muzzles working, like pointers with the scent of game in their nose. And then my friend thought surely that his last night on earth had come, that the ferocious brutes would discover him and hold him on his perch till he fell from cold or exhaustion. Which shows that he, too, gets his notions of a wolf from the story books.
By northern camp fires I have listened to many other wolf tales; but these two seem to me the most typical, having one element of undoubted truth, and another of unbridled imagination. That wolves howl at night with a clamor that is startling to an unhoused man; that when pinched by hunger they grow bold, like other beasts; that they have a little of the dog’s curiosity, and much of the dog’s tendency to run after anything that runs away,—all that is natural and wolflike; but that they will ever chase a man, knowing that he is aman, seems very doubtful to one who had always found the wolf to be as wary as any eagle, and even more difficult of approach. In a word, one’s experience of the natural wolf is sure to run counter to all the wolf stories.
For example, if you surprise a pack of wolves (rarely do they let themselves be seen, night or day), they vanish slyly or haltingly or in a headlong rush, according to the fashion of your approach; but if ever they surprise you in a quiet moment, you have a rare chance to see a fascinating bit of animal nature. The older wolves, after one keen look, pass on as if you did not exist, and pretend to be indifferent so long as you are in sight; after which they run like a scared bear for a mile or two, as you may learn by following their tracks. Meanwhile some young wolf is almost sure to take the part that a fox plays in similar circumstances. He studies you intently, puzzled by your quietness, till he thinks he is mistaken or has the wrong angle on you; then he disappears, and you are wondering where he has gone when his nose is pushed cautiously from behind a bush. Learning nothing there he draws back, and now you must not move or even turn your head while he goes to have a look at you from the rear. When you see him again he will be on the other flank; for he will not leave this interesting new thing tillhe has nosed it out from all sides. And to frighten him at such a time, or to let him frighten you, is to miss all that is worth seeing.
Again, our northern wolf is like a dog in that he has many idle moments when he wishes something would happen, and in such moments he would rather have a bit of excitement than a bellyful of meat. During the winter he lives with his pack, as a rule, following a simple and fairly regular routine. At dusk the wolves stir themselves, and often howl a bit; then they hunt and eat their one daily meal, after which they roam idly over a wide territory, nosing into all sorts of places, but holding a general direction toward their next hunting ground; for they rarely harry the same covert two nights in succession. Before sunrise they have settled on a good place to rest for the day; and it has happened, on the few occasions when I have had time or breath enough to trail wolves to their day bed, that I have always found them in a sightly spot, where they could look down on a lake or a wide stretch of country.
If from such a place of rest and observation the wolves see you passing through their solitude, some of them are apt to follow you at a distance, keeping carefully out of sight, till they find out who you are or what you are doing. Should you pass near their day bed without being seen orheard, they will surely discover that fact when they begin to hunt at nightfall; and then a wolf, a young wolf especially, will raise a great howl when he runs across your snowshoe trail; not a savage or ferocious howl, so far as I can understand it, but a howl with wonder in it, and also some excitement. It is as if the wolf that found the trail were saying, “Come hither, all noses! Here’s something new, something that you or I never smelled before. Woooo-ow-ow-ow! what’s all this now?” And if the pack be made up mostly of young wolves, you shall hear a wild chorus as they debate the matter of the trail you have just left behind you.
Such an impression, of harmless animal excitement rather than of ferocity, must surely be strengthened when you follow it up confidently with an open mind. If instead of running away when you hear wolves on your trail you steal back to meet them, the situation and the consequent story will change completely. In some subtle way the brutes seem to read your intention before you come within sight of them. They may be ready to investigate you, but have no notion of being themselves investigated; they melt away like shadows among deeper shadows, and you are at a loss to know where they are even while their keen noses are telling them all about you.
The European wolf, if one may judge him by a slight acquaintance, is essentially like our timber wolf; but his natural timidity has been modified by frequent famines, and especially by dwelling near unarmed peasant folk who are mortally afraid of him. In the summer he lives shyly in the solitudes, where he finds enough mice, grubs, and such small deer to satisfy his appetite. In winter he is always hungry, and when hunger approaches the starvation point he descends from his stronghold to raid the farms. A very little of his raiding starts a veritable reign of terror; every man, woman or child whom he meets runs away, and presently he becomes bold or even dangerous. At least, I can fancy him to be dangerous, having been in an Italian village when a severe winter brought wolves down from the mountains, and when terrified villagers related specific and horrible instances of wolf ferocity. Whenever I searched for the brutes the natives would advise or implore me not to venture into the forest alone. The rural guards kept themselves carefully housed at night, and a single guard, though armed with a rifle, would not enter the woods or cross open country even by daylight for fear of meeting the wolf pack.
It was hard for a stranger to decide whether such terrors came from bitter experience, orwhether, like our own fear of the wolf, they were the product of a lively imagination; but one was soon forced to the conclusion that where was so much smoke there must be some fire also. Moreover, as evidence of the fire, I found some official records which indicate that the European wolf may be so crazed by hunger as to kill and eat human beings. Such records inevitably pass into fireside tales, repeated, enlarged, embellished, and thereafter the wolf’s character is blackened forever. He is naturally a timid beast; but his one evil deed, done in a moment of hunger, becomes typical of a ferocious disposition. For, say what you will, the common man’s most lasting impressions of the world are not reasonable, but imaginative; they come not from observation, but from tales heard in childhood. That is perhaps the reason why Indians, in dealing with their children, always represent nature and nature’s beasts as peaceable and friendly.
Our pioneers brought many harrowing wolf tales with them to the New World, and promptly applied them to the timber wolf, a more powerful beast than his European relative, but wholly guiltless, I think, of the charge of eating human flesh even in a season of famine. Neither in our own country nor in Canada, so far as I can learn by searching, is there a single trustworthy record toindicate that our wolves have ever killed a man. Yet the tale is against them, and the consequence is, when a belated traveler hears a clamor in the darkening woods, that ferocity gets into his imagination and terror into his heels; he starts on a hatless run for shelter, and appears with another blood-curdling story of escape from a ravening pack of wolves.
In all such stories certain traits appear to betray a common and romantic origin. Thus, the imaginary pack always terrifies you by reason of its numbers; scores of grim shapes flit through shadowy woods or draw a circle of green eyes to flash back the firelight. The real pack is invariably small, since it consists of a single wolf family. The mother wolf leads; the dog wolf is in the same neighborhood, but commonly hunts by himself; with the mother go her last litter of cubs and a few grown wolves of a former litter that have not yet found their mates. From five to eight wolves make the ordinary pack. Where game is plentiful (leading to large wolf families) ten or twelve may occasionally follow the mother; but such a large pack is exceptional, even in winter. In the subarctic region, where uncounted caribou move north in spring or south in autumn, several different packs hang about the flanks of the migrating herds; but never at such timesdo the wolves unite or mass, and being well fed with the best of venison they are uncommonly peaceable.
Another romantic trait of the terrible packs of the tale is that they always howl when they charge home. It is one of the marked characteristics of the real wolf that he is silent when stalking or running down game of any kind. His howling has nothing to do with his hunting, being reserved for social or other occasions; he wastes no breath in noise, as hounds do, when he means to overtake anything. Indeed, one of the most uncanny qualities of a wolf is the fleet, soundless, mysterious way he has of appearing where he is least expected. In the northern wilderness this is the typical way of it:
You are swinging along campward, following your lonely snowshoe trail over ice-locked waters, through snow-filled woods, when there comes a vague change or chill in the air. It is the moment when we say that night is falling, when gray shadows rise from the lake to meet other shadows flowing down from the hills; and that is the moment when you can count most surely on hearing the first howl of a stirring wolf. It is a creepy sound in such a place or moment, especially when it is followed by the clamor of a pack, a cry that carries far over the silent places, and that maycome from the hills on either side or from the trail behind you. However far away it may be, there is always a menace in the wolf’s challenge; your nerves tingle as you stop to listen.
If you believe your imagination now, the fierce outcry grows louder, sweeps nearer; but if you trust your ears, you will know that it remains stationary, dying away where it began. Those noisy brutes are only proclaiming their ego, like awakened dogs; and having marked their direction you move homeward again, noting the increasing tension of the brief winter twilight, so different from the summer gloaming with its velvet shadows, its thrush song, its lingering light. Presently you have lost all thought of the distant wolves; if you remember them at all, you are thinking of the morrow’s hunt, how you will go back and search out their trail, when suddenly and most startlingly—there they are! And always the disturbing part of such a meeting is this: the wolves are behind you, in front of you, and on either side, before you have the first inkling that they are anywhere near.
So open is the forest here, and so white the snow, that you fancied a rabbit could hardly move without betraying himself to your eyes; yet without noise or shadow of motion surely that is a wolf watching you over a fallen log, where you can seeonly his eyes and his cocked ears. On the other side of the trail a bush quivers as a wolf creeps under it, but you catch no sure glimpse of him. Look behind you, and a gray something vanishes; then the woods are motionless again. And that is all you will see or hear of your ferocious wolf pack, unless, perchance, you run away; in which event some cub-wolf that knows no better may take a jump or two after you.
These timber wolves of the north are immensely interesting brutes, tireless, powerful, unbelievably cunning. To follow their trail is to have increasing respect for their keenness, their vim, their hair-trigger way of meeting any emergency. Once when I was tracking a solitary dog wolf, an uncommonly big brute, and lazy after eating his fill of venison, I came out of the woods to a frozen lake, and saw him ambling along near shore a few hundred yards ahead of me. He happened to be passing under an icy ledge, utterly unsuspicious of man or danger, when a bullet struck the ice,ping!at his heels.
That was a range shot, a bit shy, and I expected him to give me another chance; but he never even looked around to see where thepingor thebangcame from. Almost, it seemed, before the report could reach him he had tried the ledge twice, only to find it overhigh for a standing jumpand too slippery to climb. Without an instant’s hesitation he darted out on the lake for a flying start, whirled to the right-about, came at the ledge, and went superbly over it into thick cover. The ledge was over eight feet in the rise, and from the foot of it to his take-off was another ten feet; but in a flash he had measured his leap and taken it rather than expose himself any longer in the open.
Another time I saw a single wolf throw and kill a buck, a matter which called for skill as well as strength, and he did it so easily that one was left wondering what chance a man would have with a few brutes of that kind rolling in upon him. In numbers or when made reckless by hunger our timber wolves might well prove terrible enemies; but the simple fact is that they have no desire to meet a man. They are afraid of him, and avoid him even when they are hungry. Again and again, when wolves have howled about my winter camp at night, I have gone out and given them opportunity for a man hunt; but though they are much bolder by night than by day, they have never, save in one peculiar instance, shown any evidence of a hostile or dangerous disposition. And then they scared me properly, making me know how a man might feel if he were running with a pack of wolves at his heels.
The startling exception came one winter afternoonas I was crossing a frozen lake in a snowstorm. It was almost dusk when I came out of the woods, hurrying because I had far to go, and started fair across the middle of the lake. Soon the wind was blowing the snowflakes in level lines; what with snow and darkened air it became difficult to keep one’s bearings, and in order to see my way better I edged in nearer and nearer to the weather shore.
Two or three times, as I headed steadily up the lake, I had a vague impression that something moved in the woods, and moved so as to keep abreast of me; but the flying flakes interfered with clear vision till I began to come under the lee of a point of evergreens. Then I surely saw a creeping motion among the trees on my left, and stopped dead in my tracks to watch it. The next instant the underbrush was ripped open in a dozen places, and a pack of wolves rushed out. One turned and loped swiftly between me and the point ahead; another that I dared not watch sped down the lake, at a broad angle from the course of the first; the rest spread into a fan-shaped formation that broadened swiftly and must soon spring its ends together like a trap. In a twinkling every avenue of escape to the woods was shut by a wolf; there was left only a fight or a straightaway run across the ice.
The rest spread into a fan-shaped formation“The rest spread into a fan-shaped formation as they came straight on.”
“The rest spread into a fan-shaped formation as they came straight on.”
“The rest spread into a fan-shaped formation as they came straight on.”
The wolves were perhaps a hundred yards distant when they broke cover. They came on easily, their heads low, some with a curious sidling motion that presented a rough shoulder till the fangs had a chance to snap. The brutes uttered no cry, not a howl of any kind. They had been upwind from me when I came out of the woods, and I think now that they mistook me in the storm for a deer or some other game animal; but at the moment their rush looked dangerous, and their grim silence was more terrifying than any clamor. Bending down, I threw off the snowshoe straps for free footing and, as I straightened up, pulled a heavy revolver from its sheath. Then I stood stock-still, which is the most surprising thing you can do to any charging wild beast. He is so accustomed to running away from danger himself, and to seeing other beasts run away from it, that a motionless figure puzzles him, makes him suspect that there must be a mistake somewhere.
From one end of the charging line a big wolf suddenly shot out at top speed, circling to get behind me. I picked him as the one I must first kill; but I would wait till the last moment for two reasons: because shooting must be straight, there being only half as many bullets as there were wolves; and because here was the chance of alifetime to learn whether a wolf, knowing what he was doing, would ever run into a man. The mental process is slow and orderly now, but then it came and went with a snowflake that swept before my eyes.
As the big wolf whirled in on the run, still some forty yards away, the wind came fair from me to him; he got his first whiff of the man scent, and with it a terrible shock, I think, since its effect was a contortion which looked as if it might dislocate the brute’s back. At the top of a jump he tried to check himself by a violent wriggle. Down he came, his legs stiff as bars, and slid to his toes and leaped straight up again with a wild yelp, as if I had shot him. Yet up to that moment, when his nose told him what game he was running, I had not stirred a muscle.
That single yelp stopped the rush as if by magic. Most of the pack scattered on the instant; but two or three younger wolves that did not understand their blunder hesitated a bit, with surprise written all over them. Then they, too, caught the alarm, and the whole pack went speeding for cover in immense bounds, which grew convulsive when I began to play my part in the comedy. At the shot every flying brute went up in the air, as if safety lay only in the clouds or on the other side of the mountain.
Such are the real wolves. I see them yet, the snow powdering their grizzled coats, streaking away like flushed quail and vanishing with one last tremendous jump into the dusky woods, whenever I hear a good wolf story.