RUNNING WOLF
The man who enjoys an adventure outside the general
experience of the race, and imparts it to others, must
not be surprised if he is taken for either a liar or a fool,
as Malcolm Hyde, hotel clerk on a holiday, discovered in
due course. Nor is “enjoy” the right word to use in
describing his emotions; the word he chose was probably
“survive.”
When he first set eyes on Medicine Lake he was struck
by its still, sparkling beauty, lying there in the vast Canadian
backwoods; next, by its extreme loneliness; and,
lastly—a good deal later, this—by its combination of
beauty, loneliness, and singular atmosphere, due to the
fact that it was the scene of his adventure.
“It’s fairly stiff with big fish,” said Morton of the
Montreal Sporting Club. “Spend your holiday there—up
Mattawa way, some fifteen miles west of Stony Creek.
You’ll have it all to yourself except for an old Indian who’s
got a shack there. Camp on the east side—if you’ll take
a tip from me.” He then talked for half an hour about
the wonderful sport; yet he was not otherwise very communicative,
and did not suffer questions gladly, Hyde
noticed. Nor had he stayed there very long himself. If
it was such a paradise as Morton, its discoverer and the
most experienced rod in the province, claimed, why had
he himself spent only three days there?
“Ran short of grub,” was the explanation offered; but
to another friend he had mentioned briefly, “flies,” and to
a third, so Hyde learned later, he gave the excuse that his
half-breed “took sick,” necessitating a quick return to
civilization.
Hyde, however, cared little for the explanations; his
interest in these came later. “Stiff with fish” was the
phrase he liked. He took the Canadian Pacific train to
Mattawa, laid in his outfit at Stony Creek, and set off
thence for the fifteen-mile canoe-trip without a care in
the world.
Travelling light, the portages did not trouble him; the
water was swift and easy, the rapids negotiable; everything
came his way, as the saying is. Occasionally he saw
big fish making for the deeper pools, and was sorely
tempted to stop; but he resisted. He pushed on between
the immense world of forests that stretched for hundreds
of miles, known to deer, bear, moose, and wolf, but strange
to any echo of human tread, a deserted and primeval wilderness.
The autumn day was calm, the water sang and
sparkled, the blue sky hung cloudless over all, ablaze with
light. Toward evening he passed an old beaver-dam,
rounded a little point, and had his first sight of Medicine
Lake. He lifted his dripping paddle; the canoe shot with
silent glide into calm water. He gave an exclamation of
delight, for the loveliness caught his breath away.
Though primarily a sportsman, he was not insensible
to beauty. The lake formed a crescent, perhaps four miles
long, its width between a mile and half a mile. The
slanting gold of sunset flooded it. No wind stirred its
crystal surface. Here it had lain since the redskin’s god
first made it; here it would lie until he dried it up again.
Towering spruce and hemlock trooped to its very edge,
majestic cedars leaned down as if to drink, crimson
sumachs shone in fiery patches, and maples gleamed orange
and red beyond belief. The air was like wine, with the
silence of a dream.
It was here the red men formerly “made medicine,”
with all the wild ritual and tribal ceremony of an ancient
day. But it was of Morton, rather than of Indians, that
Hyde thought. If this lonely, hidden paradise was really
stiff with big fish, he owed a lot to Morton for the information.
Peace invaded him, but the excitement of the hunter
lay below.
He looked about him with quick, practised eye for a
camping-place before the sun sank below the forests and
the half-lights came. The Indian’s shack, lying in full
sunshine on the eastern shore, he found at once; but the
trees lay too thick about it for comfort, nor did he wish
to be so close to its inhabitant. Upon the opposite side,
however, an ideal clearing offered. This lay already in
shadow, the huge forest darkening it toward evening; but
the open space attracted. He paddled over quickly and
examined it. The ground was hard and dry, he found,
and a little brook ran tinkling down one side of it into
the lake. This outfall, too, would be a good fishing spot.
Also it was sheltered. A few low willows marked the
mouth.
An experienced camper soon makes up his mind. It
was a perfect site, and some charred logs, with traces of
former fires, proved that he was not the first to think so.
Hyde was delighted. Then, suddenly, disappointment
came to tinge his pleasure. His kit was landed, and
preparations for putting up the tent were begun, when he
recalled a detail that excitement had so far kept in the
background of his mind—Morton’s advice. But not Morton’s
only, for the storekeeper at Stony Creek had reinforced
it. The big fellow with straggling moustache and
stooping shoulders, dressed in shirt and trousers, had
handed him out a final sentence with the bacon, flour, condensed
milk, and sugar. He had repeated Morton’s half-forgotten
words:
“Put yer tent on the east shore. I should,” he had
said at parting.
He remembered Morton, too, apparently. “A shortish
fellow, brown as an Indian and fairly smelling of the
woods. Travelling with Jake, the half-breed.” That
assuredly was Morton. “Didn’t stay long, now, did he?”
he added in a reflective tone.
“Going Windy Lake way, are yer? Or Ten Mile Water,
maybe?” he had first inquired of Hyde.
“Medicine Lake.”
“Is that so?” the man said, as though he doubted it
for some obscure reason. He pulled at his ragged moustache
a moment. “Is that so, now?” he repeated. And
the final words followed him down-stream after a considerable
pause—the advice about the best shore on which
to put his tent.
All this now suddenly flashed back upon Hyde’s mind
with a tinge of disappointment and annoyance, for when
two experienced men agreed, their opinion was not to be
lightly disregarded. He wished he had asked the storekeeper
for more details. He looked about him, he reflected,
he hesitated. His ideal camping-ground lay certainly
on the forbidden shore. What in the world, he
pondered, could be the objection to it?
But the light was fading; he must decide quickly one
way or the other. After staring at his unpacked dunnage
and the tent, already half erected, he made up his mind
with a muttered expression that consigned both Morton
and the storekeeper to less pleasant places. “They must
have
some reason,” he growled to himself; “fellows like
that usually know what they’re talking about. I guess I’d
better shift over to the other side—for to-night, at any
rate.”
 |
| Medicine Lake, Canada |
He glanced across the water before actually reloading.
No smoke rose from the Indian’s shack. He had seen no
sign of a canoe. The man, he decided, was away. Reluctantly,
then, he left the good camping-ground and
paddled across the lake, and half an hour later his tent was
up, firewood collected, and two small trout were already
caught for supper. But the bigger fish, he knew, lay waiting
for him on the other side by the little outfall, and
he fell asleep at length on his bed of balsam boughs,
annoyed and disappointed, yet wondering how a mere sentence
could have persuaded him so easily against his own
better judgment. He slept like the dead; the sun was well
up before he stirred.
But his morning mood was a very different one. The
brilliant light, the peace, the intoxicating air, all this was
too exhilarating for the mind to harbour foolish fancies,
and he marvelled that he could have been so weak the night
before. No hesitation lay in him anywhere. He struck
camp immediately after breakfast, paddled back across the
strip of shining water, and quickly settled in upon the
forbidden shore, as he now called it, with a contemptuous
grin. And the more he saw of the spot, the better he
liked it. There was plenty of wood, running water to
drink, an open space about the tent, and there were no flies.
The fishing, moreover, was magnificent. Morton’s description
was fully justified, and “stiff with big fish” for once
was not an exaggeration.
The useless hours of the early afternoon he passed
dozing in the sun, or wandering through the underbrush
beyond the camp. He found no sign of anything unusual.
He bathed in a cool, deep pool; he revelled in the lonely
little paradise. Lonely it certainly was, but the loneliness
was part of its charm; the stillness, the peace, the
isolation of this beautiful backwoods lake delighted him.
The silence was divine. He was entirely satisfied.
After a brew of tea, he strolled toward evening along
the shore, looking for the first sign of a rising fish. A
faint ripple on the water, with the lengthening shadows,
made good conditions.
Plop followed
plop, as the big
fellows rose, snatched at their food, and vanished into the
depths. He hurried back. Ten minutes later he had
taken his rods and was gliding cautiously in the canoe
through the quiet water.
So good was the sport, indeed, and so quickly did the
big trout pile up in the bottom of the canoe that, despite
the growing lateness, he found it hard to tear himself
away. “One more,” he said, “and then I really will go.”
He landed that “one more,” and was in act of taking it
off the hook, when the deep silence of the evening was
curiously disturbed. He became abruptly aware that
someone watched him. A pair of eyes, it seemed, were
fixed upon him from some point in the surrounding
shadows.
Thus, at least, he interpreted the odd disturbance in
his happy mood; for thus he felt it. The feeling stole
over him without the slightest warning. He was not alone.
The slippery big trout dropped from his fingers. He sat
motionless, and stared about him.
Nothing stirred; the ripple on the lake had died away;
there was no wind; the forest lay a single purple mass
of shadow; the yellow sky, fast fading, threw reflections
that troubled the eye and made distances uncertain. But
there was no sound, no movement; he saw no figure anywhere.
Yet he knew that someone watched him, and a
wave of quite unreasoning terror gripped him. The nose
of the canoe was against the bank. In a moment, and
instinctively, he shoved it off and paddled into deeper
water. The watcher, it came to him also instinctively, was
quite close to him upon that bank. But where? And
who? Was it the Indian?
Here, in deeper water, and some twenty yards from
the shore, he paused and strained both sight and hearing
to find some possible clue. He felt half ashamed, now
that the first strange feeling passed a little. But the certainty
remained. Absurd as it was, he felt positive that
someone watched him with concentrated and intent regard.
Every fibre in his being told him so; and though he could
discover no figure, no new outline on the shore, he could
even have sworn in which clump of willow bushes the
hidden person crouched and stared. His attention seemed
drawn to that particular clump.
The water dripped slowly from his paddle, now lying
across the thwarts. There was no other sound. The canvas
of his tent gleamed dimly. A star or two were out.
He waited. Nothing happened.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the feeling passed,
and he knew that the person who had been watching him
intently had gone. It was as if a current had been turned
off; the normal world flowed back; the landscape emptied
as if someone had left a room. The disagreeable feeling
left him at the same time, so that he instantly turned the
canoe in to the shore again, landed, and, paddle in hand,
went over to examine the clump of willows he had singled
out as the place of concealment. There was no one there,
of course, nor any trace of recent human occupancy. No
leaves, no branches stirred, nor was a single twig displaced;
his keen and practised sight detected no sign of
tracks upon the ground. Yet, for all that, he felt positive
that a little time ago someone had crouched among
these very leaves and watched him. He remained absolutely
convinced of it. The watcher, whether Indian,
hunter, stray lumberman, or wandering half-breed, had
now withdrawn, a search was useless, and dusk was falling.
He returned to his little camp, more disturbed perhaps
than he cared to acknowledge. He cooked his supper,
hung up his catch on a string, so that no prowling animal
could get at it during the night, and prepared to make
himself comfortable until bedtime. Unconsciously, he built
a bigger fire than usual, and found himself peering over
his pipe into the deep shadows beyond the firelight, straining
his ears to catch the slightest sound. He remained
generally on the alert in a way that was new to him.
A man under such conditions and in such a place need
not know discomfort until the sense of loneliness strikes
him as too vivid a reality. Loneliness in a backwoods
camp brings charm, pleasure, and a happy sense of calm
until, and unless, it comes too near. It should remain an
ingredient only among other conditions; it should not be
directly, vividly noticed. Once it has crept within short
range, however, it may easily cross the narrow line between
comfort and discomfort, and darkness is an undesirable
time for the transition. A curious dread may easily
follow—the dread lest the loneliness suddenly be disturbed,
and the solitary human feel himself open to attack.
For Hyde, now, this transition had been already accomplished;
the too intimate sense of his loneliness had
shifted abruptly into the worse condition of no longer
being quite alone. It was an awkward moment, and the
hotel clerk realized his position exactly. He did not quite
like it. He sat there, with his back to the blazing logs,
a very visible object in the light, while all about him the
darkness of the forest lay like an impenetrable wall. He
could not see a foot beyond the small circle of his camp-fire;
the silence about him was like the silence of the dead.
No leaf rustled, no wave lapped; he himself sat motionless
as a log.
Then again he became suddenly aware that the person
who watched him had returned, and that same intent and
concentrated gaze as before was fixed upon him where he
lay. There was no warning; he heard no stealthy tread
or snapping of dry twigs, yet the owner of those steady
eyes was very close to him, probably not a dozen feet away.
This sense of proximity was overwhelming.
It is unquestionable that a shiver ran down his spine.
This time, moreover, he felt positive that the man crouched
just beyond the firelight, the distance he himself could
see being nicely calculated, and straight in front of him.
For some minutes he sat without stirring a single muscle,
yet with each muscle ready and alert, straining his eyes
in vain to pierce the darkness, but only succeeding in
dazzling his sight with the reflected light. Then, as he
shifted his position slowly, cautiously, to obtain another
angle of vision, his heart gave two big thumps against his
ribs and the hair seemed to rise on his scalp with the sense
of cold that shot horribly up his spine. In the darkness
facing him he saw two small and greenish circles that
were certainly a pair of eyes, yet not the eyes of Indian,
hunter, or of any human being. It was a pair of animal
eyes that stared so fixedly at him out of the night. And
this certainly had an immediate and natural effect upon
him.
For, at the menace of those eyes, the fears of millions
of long dead hunters since the dawn of time woke in him.
Hotel clerk though he was, heredity surged through him
in an automatic wave of instinct. His hand groped for
a weapon. His fingers fell on the iron head of his small
camp axe, and at once he was himself again. Confidence
returned; the vague, superstitious dread was gone. This
was a bear or wolf that smelt his catch and came to steal
it. With beings of that sort he knew instinctively how
to deal, yet admitting, by this very instinct, that his original
dread had been of quite another kind.
“I’ll damned quick find out what it is,” he exclaimed
aloud, and snatching a burning brand from the fire, he
hurled it with good aim straight at the eyes of the beast
before him.
The bit of pitch-pine fell in a shower of sparks that lit
the dry grass this side of the animal, flared up a moment,
then died quickly down again. But in that instant of
bright illumination he saw clearly what his unwelcome visitor
was. A big timber wolf sat on its hindquarters, staring
steadily at him through the firelight. He saw its legs
and shoulders, he saw its hair, he saw also the big hemlock
trunks lit up behind it, and the willow scrub on each
side. It formed a vivid, clear-cut picture shown in clear
detail by the momentary blaze. To his amazement, however,
the wolf did not turn and bolt away from the burning
log, but withdrew a few yards only, and sat there
again on its haunches, staring, staring as before. Heavens,
how it stared! He “shoo-ed” it, but without effect; it
did not budge. He did not waste another good log on it,
for his fear was dissipated now; a timber wolf was a timber
wolf, and it might sit there as long as it pleased, provided
it did not try to steal his catch. No alarm was in
him any more. He knew that wolves were harmless in
the summer and autumn, and even when “packed” in the
winter, they would attack a man only when suffering desperate
hunger. So he lay and watched the beast, threw
bits of stick in its direction, even talked to it, wondering
only that it never moved. “You can stay there for ever,
if you like,” he remarked to it aloud, “for you cannot get
at my fish, and the rest of the grub I shall take into the
tent with me!”
The creature blinked its bright green eyes, but made
no move.
Why, then, if his fear was gone, did he think of certain
things as he rolled himself in the Hudson Bay
blankets before going to sleep? The immobility of the
animal was strange, its refusal to turn and bolt was still
stranger. Never before had he known a wild creature that
was not afraid of fire. Why did it sit and watch him, as
with purpose in its dreadful eyes? How had he felt its
presence earlier and instantly? A timber wolf, especially
a solitary timber wolf, was a timid thing, yet this one
feared neither man nor fire. Now, as he lay there
wrapped in his blankets inside the cosy tent, it sat outside
beneath the stars, beside the fading embers, the wind chilly
in its fur, the ground cooling beneath its planted paws,
watching him, steadily watching him, perhaps until the
dawn.
It was unusual, it was strange. Having neither imagination
nor tradition, he called upon no store of racial
visions. Matter of fact, a hotel clerk on a fishing holiday,
he lay there in his blankets, merely wondering and puzzled.
A timber wolf was a timber wolf and nothing more. Yet
this timber wolf—the idea haunted him—was different. In
a word, the deeper part of his original uneasiness remained.
He tossed about, he shivered sometimes in his broken
sleep; he did not go out to see, but he woke early and
unrefreshed.
Again, with the sunshine and the morning wind, however,
the incident of the night before was forgotten, almost
unreal. His hunting zeal was uppermost. The tea and
fish were delicious, his pipe had never tasted so good, the
glory of this lonely lake amid primeval forests went to
his head a little; he was a hunter before the Lord, and
nothing else. He tried the edge of the lake, and in the
excitement of playing a big fish, knew suddenly that
it,
the wolf, was there. He paused with the rod, exactly as
if struck. He looked about him, he looked in a definite
direction. The brilliant sunshine made every smallest
detail clear and sharp—boulders of granite, burned stems,
crimson sumach, pebbles along the shore in neat, separate
detail—without revealing where the watcher hid. Then,
his sight wandering farther inshore among the tangled
undergrowth, he suddenly picked up the familiar, half-expected
outline. The wolf was lying behind a granite
boulder, so that only the head, the muzzle, and the eyes
were visible. It merged in its background. Had he not
known it was a wolf, he could never have separated it
from the landscape. The eyes shone in the sunlight.
There it lay. He looked straight at it. Their eyes, in
fact, actually met full and square. “Great Scott!” he exclaimed
aloud, “why, it’s like looking at a human being!”
From that moment, unwittingly, he established a singular
personal relation with the beast. And what followed
confirmed this undesirable impression, for the animal rose
instantly and came down in leisurely fashion to the shore,
where it stood looking back at him. It stood and stared
into his eyes like some great wild dog, so that he was aware
of a new and almost incredible sensation—that it courted
recognition.
“Well! well!” he exclaimed again, relieving his feelings
by addressing it aloud, “if this doesn’t beat everything
I ever saw! What d’you want, anyway?”
He examined it now more carefully. He had never
seen a wolf so big before; it was a tremendous beast, a
nasty customer to tackle, he reflected, if it ever came to
that. It stood there absolutely fearless and full of confidence.
In the clear sunlight he took in every detail of
it—a huge, shaggy, lean-flanked timber wolf, its wicked
eyes staring straight into his own, almost with a kind
of purpose in them. He saw its great jaws, its teeth, and
its tongue, hung out, dropping saliva a little. And yet the
idea of its savagery, its fierceness, was very little in him.
He was amazed and puzzled beyond belief. He wished
the Indian would come back. He did not understand this
strange behaviour in an animal. Its eyes, the odd expression
in them, gave him a queer, unusual, difficult feeling.
Had his nerves gone wrong, he almost wondered.
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| Joe Sartore "Grey Wolf on Shore" |
The beast stood on the shore and looked at him. He
wished for the first time that he had brought a rifle.
With a resounding smack he brought his paddle down flat
upon the water, using all his strength, till the echoes rang
as from a pistol-shot that was audible from one end of
the lake to the other. The wolf never stirred. He shouted,
but the beast remained unmoved. He blinked his eyes,
speaking as to a dog, a domestic animal, a creature accustomed
to human ways. It blinked its eyes in return.
At length, increasing his distance from the shore, he
continued fishing, and the excitement of the marvellous
sport held his attention—his surface attention, at any rate.
At times he almost forgot the attendant beast; yet whenever
he looked up, he saw it there. And worse; when
he slowly paddled home again, he observed it trotting
along the shore as though to keep him company. Crossing
a little bay, he spurted, hoping to reach the other point
before his undesired and undesirable attendant. Instantly
the brute broke into that rapid, tireless lope that, except
on ice, can run down anything on four legs in the woods.
When he reached the distant point, the wolf was waiting
for him. He raised his paddle from the water, pausing
a moment for reflection; for this very close attention—there
were dusk and night yet to come—he certainly did
not relish. His camp was near; he had to land; he felt
uncomfortable even in the sunshine of broad day, when,
to his keen relief, about half a mile from the tent, he saw
the creature suddenly stop and sit down in the open. He
waited a moment, then paddled on. It did not follow.
There was no attempt to move; it merely sat and watched
him. After a few hundred yards, he looked back. It was
still sitting where he left it. And the absurd, yet significant,
feeling came to him that the beast divined his
thought, his anxiety, his dread, and was now showing
him, as well as it could, that it entertained no hostile feeling
and did not meditate attack.
He turned the canoe toward the shore; he landed; he
cooked his supper in the dusk; the animal made no sign.
Not far away it certainly lay and watched, but it did not
advance. And to Hyde, observant now in a new way,
came one sharp, vivid reminder of the strange atmosphere
into which his commonplace personality had strayed: he
suddenly recalled that his relations with the beast, already
established, had progressed distinctly a stage further. This
startled him, yet without the accompanying alarm he must
certainly have felt twenty-four hours before. He had an
understanding with the wolf. He was aware of friendly
thoughts toward it. He even went so far as to set out a
few big fish on the spot where he had first seen it sitting
the previous night. “If he comes,” he thought, “he is
welcome to them. I’ve got plenty, anyway.” He thought
of it now as “he.”
Yet the wolf made no appearance until he was in the
act of entering his tent a good deal later. It was close
on ten o’clock, whereas nine was his hour, and late at
that, for turning in. He had, therefore, unconsciously
been waiting for him. Then, as he was closing the flap,
he saw the eyes close to where he had placed the fish.
He waited, hiding himself, and expecting to hear sounds
of munching jaws; but all was silence. Only the eyes
glowed steadily out of the background of pitch darkness.
He closed the flap. He had no slightest fear. In ten
minutes he was sound asleep.
He could not have slept very long, for when he woke
up he could see the shine of a faint red light through the
canvas, and the fire had not died down completely. He
rose and cautiously peeped out. The air was very cold;
he saw his breath. But he also saw the wolf, for it had
come in, and was sitting by the dying embers, not two
yards away from where he crouched behind the flap. And
this time, at these very close quarters, there was something
in the attitude of the big wild thing that caught his
attention with a vivid thrill of startled surprise and a
sudden shock of cold that held him spellbound. He
stared, unable to believe his eyes; for the wolf’s attitude
conveyed to him something familiar that at first he was
unable to explain. Its pose reached him in the terms of
another thing with which he was entirely at home. What
was it? Did his senses betray him? Was he still asleep
and dreaming?
Then, suddenly, with a start of uncanny recognition,
he knew. Its attitude was that of a dog. Having found
the clue, his mind then made an awful leap. For it was,
after all, no dog its appearance aped, but something nearer
to himself, and more familiar still. Good heavens! It
sat there with the pose, the attitude, the gesture in repose
of something almost human. And then, with a second
shock of biting wonder, it came to him like a revelation.
The wolf sat beside that camp-fire as a man might sit.
Before he could weigh his extraordinary discovery, before
he could examine it in detail or with care, the animal,
sitting in this ghastly fashion, seemed to feel his
eyes fixed on it. It slowly turned and looked him in the
face, and for the first time Hyde felt a full-blooded, superstitious
fear flood through his entire being. He seemed
transfixed with that nameless terror that is said to attack
human beings who suddenly face the dead, finding themselves
bereft of speech and movement. This moment of
paralysis certainly occurred. Its passing, however, was as
singular as its advent. For almost at once he was aware
of something beyond and above this mockery of human
attitude and pose, something that ran along unaccustomed
nerves and reached his feeling, even perhaps his heart.
The revulsion was extraordinary, its result still more extraordinary
and unexpected. Yet the fact remains. He was
aware of another thing that had the effect of stilling his
terror as soon as it was born. He was aware of appeal,
silent, half expressed, yet vastly pathetic. He saw in the
savage eyes a beseeching, even a yearning, expression that
changed his mood as by magic from dread to natural
sympathy. The great grey brute, symbol of cruel ferocity,
sat there beside his dying fire and appealed for help.
This gulf betwixt animal and human seemed in that
instant bridged. It was, of course, incredible. Hyde,
sleep still possibly clinging to his inner being with the
shades and half shapes of dream yet about his soul,
acknowledged, how he knew not, the amazing fact. He
found himself nodding to the brute in half consent, and
instantly, without more ado, the lean grey shape rose
like a wraith and trotted off swiftly, but with stealthy tread,
into the background of the night.
When Hyde woke in the morning his first impression
was that he must have dreamed the entire incident. His
practical nature asserted itself. There was a bite in the
fresh autumn air; the bright sun allowed no half lights
anywhere; he felt brisk in mind and body. Reviewing
what had happened, he came to the conclusion that it
was utterly vain to speculate; no possible explanation of
the animal’s behaviour occurred to him; he was dealing with
something entirely outside his experience. His fear, however,
had completely left him. The odd sense of friendliness
remained. The beast had a definite purpose, and
he himself was included in that purpose. His sympathy
held good.
But with the sympathy there was also an intense curiosity.
“If it shows itself again,” he told himself, “I’ll go
up close and find out what it wants.” The fish laid out
the night before had not been touched.
It must have been a full hour after breakfast when
he next saw the brute; it was standing on the edge of the
clearing, looking at him in the way now become familiar.
Hyde immediately picked up his axe and advanced toward
it boldly, keeping his eyes fixed straight upon its
own. There was nervousness in him, but kept well under;
nothing betrayed it; step by step he drew nearer until some
ten yards separated them. The wolf had not stirred a
muscle as yet. Its jaws hung open, its eyes observed him
intently; it allowed him to approach without a sign of
what its mood might be. Then, with these ten yards between
them, it turned abruptly and moved slowly off,
looking back first over one shoulder and then over the
other, exactly as a dog might do, to see if he was following.
A singular journey it was they then made together,
animal and man. The trees surrounded them at once, for
they left the lake behind them, entering the tangled bush
beyond. The beast, Hyde noticed, obviously picked the
easiest track for him to follow; for obstacles that meant
nothing to the four-legged expert, yet were difficult for a
man, were carefully avoided with an almost uncanny skill,
while yet the general direction was accurately kept. Occasionally
there were windfalls to be surmounted; but though
the wolf bounded over these with ease, it was always
waiting for the man on the other side after he had laboriously
climbed over. Deeper and deeper into the heart of
the lonely forest they penetrated in this singular fashion,
cutting across the arc of the lake’s crescent, it seemed to
Hyde; for after two miles or so, he recognized the big
rocky bluff that overhung the water at its northern end.
This outstanding bluff he had seen from his camp, one
side of it falling sheer into the water; it was probably the
spot, he imagined, where the Indians held their medicine-making
ceremonies, for it stood out in isolated fashion,
and its top formed a private plateau not easy of access.
And it was here, close to a big spruce at the foot of the
bluff upon the forest side, that the wolf stopped suddenly
and for the first time since its appearance gave audible
expression to its feelings. It sat down on its haunches,
lifted its muzzle with open jaws, and gave vent to a
subdued and long-drawn howl that was more like the wail
of a dog than the fierce barking cry associated with a
wolf.
 |
| "The Dead of Night "by Joanna |
By this time Hyde had lost not only fear, but caution
too; nor, oddly enough, did this warning howl revive a
sign of unwelcome emotion in him. In that curious sound
he detected the same message that the eyes conveyed—appeal
for help. He paused, nevertheless, a little startled,
and while the wolf sat waiting for him, he looked about
him quickly. There was young timber here; it had once
been a small clearing, evidently. Axe and fire had done
their work, but there was evidence to an experienced eye
that it was Indians and not white men who had once been
busy here. Some part of the medicine ritual, doubtless,
took place in the little clearing, thought the man, as he
advanced again towards his patient leader. The end of
their queer journey, he felt, was close at hand.
He had not taken two steps before the animal got up
and moved very slowly in the direction of some low bushes
that formed a clump just beyond. It entered these, first
looking back to make sure that its companion watched.
The bushes hid it; a moment later it emerged again.
Twice it performed this pantomime, each time, as it reappeared,
standing still and staring at the man with as
distinct an expression of appeal in the eyes as an animal
may compass, probably. Its excitement, meanwhile, certainly
increased, and this excitement was, with equal certainty,
communicated to the man. Hyde made up his
mind quickly. Gripping his axe tightly, and ready to use
it at the first hint of malice, he moved slowly nearer to
the bushes, wondering with something of a tremor what
would happen.
If he expected to be startled, his expectation was at
once fulfilled; but it was the behaviour of the beast that
made him jump. It positively frisked about him like a
happy dog. It frisked for joy. Its excitement was intense,
yet from its open mouth no sound was audible. With a
sudden leap, then, it bounded past him into the clump
of bushes, against whose very edge he stood, and began
scraping vigorously at the ground. Hyde stood and
stared, amazement and interest now banishing all his nervousness,
even when the beast, in its violent scraping, actually
touched his body with its own. He had, perhaps, the
feeling that he was in a dream, one of those fantastic
dreams in which things may happen without involving an
adequate surprise; for otherwise the manner of scraping
and scratching at the ground must have seemed an impossible
phenomenon. No wolf, no dog certainly, used its
paws in the way those paws were working. Hyde had the
odd, distressing sensation that it was hands, not paws, he
watched. And yet, somehow, the natural, adequate surprise
he should have felt was absent. The strange action
seemed not entirely unnatural. In his heart some deep
hidden spring of sympathy and pity stirred instead. He
was aware of pathos.
The wolf stopped in its task and looked up into his
face. Hyde acted without hesitation then. Afterwards he
was wholly at a loss to explain his own conduct. It seemed
he knew what to do, divined what was asked, expected of
him. Between his mind and the dumb desire yearning
through the savage animal there was intelligent and intelligible
communication. He cut a stake and sharpened
it, for the stones would blunt his axe-edge. He entered
the clump of bushes to complete the digging his four-legged
companion had begun. And while he worked,
though he did not forget the close proximity of the wolf,
he paid no attention to it; often his back was turned as he
stooped over the laborious clearing away of the hard earth;
no uneasiness or sense of danger was in him any more.
The wolf sat outside the clump and watched the operations.
Its concentrated attention, its patience, its intense
eagerness, the gentleness and docility of the grey, fierce,
and probably hungry brute, its obvious pleasure and satisfaction,
too, at having won the human to its mysterious
purpose—these were colours in the strange picture that
Hyde thought of later when dealing with the human herd
in his hotel again. At the moment he was aware chiefly
of pathos and affection. The whole business was, of
course, not to be believed, but that discovery came later,
too, when telling it to others.
The digging continued for fully half an hour before
his labour was rewarded by the discovery of a small
whitish object. He picked it up and examined it—the
finger-bone of a man. Other discoveries then followed
quickly and in quantity. The
cache was laid bare. He
collected nearly the complete skeleton. The skull, however,
he found last, and might not have found at all but
for the guidance of his strangely alert companion. It lay
some few yards away from the central hole now dug, and
the wolf stood nuzzling the ground with its nose before
Hyde understood that he was meant to dig exactly in that
spot for it. Between the beast’s very paws his stake
struck hard upon it. He scraped the earth from the bone
and examined it carefully. It was perfect, save for the
fact that some wild animal had gnawed it, the teeth-marks
being still plainly visible. Close beside it lay the rusty
iron head of a tomahawk. This and the smallness of the
bones confirmed him in his judgment that it was the skeleton
not of a white man, but of an Indian.
During the excitement of the discovery of the bones
one by one, and finally of the skull, but, more especially,
during the period of intense interest while Hyde was
examining them, he had paid little, if any, attention to the
wolf. He was aware that it sat and watched him, never
moving its keen eyes for a single moment from the actual
operations, but of sign or movement it made none at all.
He knew that it was pleased and satisfied, he knew also
that he had now fulfilled its purpose in a great measure.
The further intuition that now came to him, derived, he
felt positive, from his companion’s dumb desire, was perhaps
the cream of the entire experience to him. Gathering
the bones together in his coat, he carried them, together
with the tomahawk, to the foot of the big spruce
where the animal had first stopped. His leg actually
touched the creature’s muzzle as he passed. It turned its
head to watch, but did not follow, nor did it move a
muscle while he prepared the platform of boughs upon
which he then laid the poor worn bones of an Indian who
had been killed, doubtless, in sudden attack or ambush,
and to whose remains had been denied the last grace of
proper tribal burial. He wrapped the bones in bark; he
laid the tomahawk beside the skull; he lit the circular fire
round the pyre, and the blue smoke rose upward into the
clear bright sunshine of the Canadian autumn morning till
it was lost among the mighty trees far overhead.
In the moment before actually lighting the little fire
he had turned to note what his companion did. It sat
five yards away, he saw, gazing intently, and one of its
front paws was raised a little from the ground. It made
no sign of any kind. He finished the work, becoming so
absorbed in it that he had eyes for nothing but the tending
and guarding of his careful ceremonial fire. It was
only when the platform of boughs collapsed, laying their
charred burden gently on the fragrant earth among the
soft wood ashes, that he turned again, as though to show
the wolf what he had done, and seek, perhaps, some look
of satisfaction in its curiously expressive eyes. But the
place he searched was empty. The wolf had gone.
He did not see it again; it gave no sign of its presence
anywhere; he was not watched. He fished as before, wandered
through the bush about his camp, sat smoking round
his fire after dark, and slept peacefully in his cosy little
tent. He was not disturbed. No howl was ever audible
in the distant forest, no twig snapped beneath a stealthy
tread, he saw no eyes. The wolf that behaved like a man
had gone for ever.
It was the day before he left that Hyde, noticing smoke
rising from the shack across the lake, paddled over to
exchange a word or two with the Indian, who had evidently
now returned. The Redskin came down to meet
him as he landed, but it was soon plain that he spoke very
little English. He emitted the familiar grunts at first;
then bit by bit Hyde stirred his limited vocabulary into
action. The net result, however, was slight enough, though
it was certainly direct:
“You camp there?” the man asked, pointing to the
other side.
“Yes.”
“Wolf come?”
“Yes.”
“You see wolf?”
“Yes.”
The Indian stared at him fixedly a moment, a keen,
wondering look upon his coppery, creased face.
“You ’fraid wolf?” he asked after a moment’s pause.
“No,” replied Hyde, truthfully. He knew it was useless
to ask questions of his own, though he was eager for
information. The other would have told him nothing. It
was sheer luck that the man had touched on the subject at
all, and Hyde realized that his own best rôle was merely to
answer, but to ask no questions. Then, suddenly, the
Indian became comparatively voluble. There was awe in
his voice and manner.
“Him no wolf. Him big medicine wolf. Him spirit
wolf.”
Whereupon he drank the tea the other had brewed for
him, closed his lips tightly, and said no more. His outline
was discernible on the shore, rigid and motionless, an
hour later, when Hyde’s canoe turned the corner of the
lake three miles away, and landed to make the portages up
the first rapid of his homeward stream.
It was Morton who, after some persuasion, supplied
further details of what he called the legend. Some hundred
years before, the tribe that lived in the territory
beyond the lake began their annual medicine-making ceremonies
on the big rocky bluff at the northern end; but
no medicine could be made. The spirits, declared the chief
medicine man, would not answer. They were offended.
An investigation followed. It was discovered that a young
brave had recently killed a wolf, a thing strictly forbidden,
since the wolf was the totem animal of the tribe. To
make matters worse, the name of the guilty man was
Running Wolf. The offense being
unpardonable, the man
was cursed and driven from the tribe:
“Go out. Wander alone among the woods, and if we
see you we slay you. Your bones shall be scattered in the
forest, and your spirit shall not enter the Happy Hunting
Grounds till one of another race shall find and bury them.”
“Which meant,” explained Morton laconically, his only
comment on the story, “probably for ever.”
